


Ruin of a Place

by elo_elo



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Earth, Angst, Developing Friendships, Eventual Smut, F/M, Female Friendship, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Healthy Relationships, Older Man/Younger Woman, Slow Burn, Smut, age difference is ~15 years, and took a lot of liberties with the town, but kept the feeling of the game, but no weird shit i promise, but only a touch, i guess just to say that i'm going to referring to real places, i know im surprised too, is that even a tag i need? idk, literally the SLOWEST BURN, slow slow slow slow slow burn, tags will be updated when we get to those chapters, we love haley in this household
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:46:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 53,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23885458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elo_elo/pseuds/elo_elo
Summary: A surprise in her grandfather’s will sends recent college graduate Kay to the dreary coast of Pelican Town, Maine. She’s just supposed to keep the place standing until summer, but alone in a house steeped in family secrets, Kay finds herself drawn to the warmth of the town just a mile down the road. And, maybe, drawn too to the town’s resident doctor.
Relationships: Harvey/Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 292
Kudos: 451





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I never thought I would do another SDV fic outside of my usual ship, but here we are, dreaming of older doctors and rainy coastal towns. I really hope you enjoy :)

The flight is bumpy. Almost the whole way. Kay stares out the window down at the flat land below her. Roads pass under them like a grid, the plane’s shadow so small she can cover it with her palm. It’s been an inauspicious trip so far. She nearly missed this flight. Had to run through the terminal to get to it, only to have to wait in a long, looping line for so long her fellow passengers started to audibly complain. And as she’d stuffed her too heavy carry on into the overhead bin, she’d taken a minute to take inventory of them. Families mostly. A few older couples. It had, for some reason, filled her with a vague dread she’s still trying to get out from under.

Kay takes hold of her seatbelt; the cool metal has warmed from where she’s been worrying it. The man beside her grunts as they hit another patch of turbulence, his coffee spilling over his fingers, his cufflinks glinting in the dull light of the plane. Kay turns back to the view out the window. Not a cloud in the sky. Just clear air between them and that flat grid of earth. Kay slides the window shut, glances up at the fasten seatbelt sign.

She watched a documentary about plane crashes once. Right after her college graduation, months ago now. The apartment where she lived was all students and their exodus came like a slow tide, dwindling until it was just her. Alone in her room. Surrounded by boxes and her newly white walls. Drinking the rest of her and roommates’ liquor at all hours of the day, eating on the same pizza for a week. A slice here, a slice there. The rhythm of the day lost with the people that used to populate it. Everyone was feeling that way, more or less. Her group messages were blowing up. But all her friends were back home. Or in their new places, in new cities, starting new lives. Only Kay waited so long to move that her loneliness had her spiraling down all kinds of weird internet holes. The plane hits another deep patch of turbulence, pitching a little to the left then rattling. Her neighbor curses softly then drains his coffee. A woman behind her lets out a yelp that devolves quickly into nervous, almost pleading laughter.

The documentary was from the nineties, keyed up with slightly wonky audio on YouTube, video quality the soft blur of evening news at the turn of the millennium. A big kick of childhood nostalgia. Made even more intense by Gillian Anderson hosting, her voice wavering like the producers had her at gunpoint. She’d pop from background to background – the cockpit of a grounded plane, the busy terminal of an airport – dropping real doozies. Something about unsecured babies gone flying through wreckage, something about rain on the runway. _You are totally and absolutely out of control of your future and your fate,_ a frowning, bespectacled man told the audience, flanked in the background by two propeller planes. He’d been in a plane crash and when the camera zoomed just a little in, he’d started to cry. The quiet, constipated tears of a man who usually doesn’t, and definitely not in front of others.

Kay stretches up to look over the seats. So many neat rows, so many people. There’s a woman two rows back who looks like she’s about to hurl, pallid, eyes darting around the plane to look at all the other passengers. Kay figures she’s probably the one who cried out, wonders if it’s soothing or frightening that no one else seems to be worried about the bumpy ride. The plane pitches again and it’s Kay’s turn to yelp. Her seatmate glances over at her before returning to his paperback. Clive Cussler. _Jesus._ The plane rattles again and Kay tries as covertly as possible to grip the seat. Turbulence doesn’t usually rattle her. The plane pitches again. She white knuckles, can’t help but look again out the window down at the patchwork quilt of farmland below. It’s easy to imagine herself falling through that clear air. Arms outstretched. Cornfields and empty highway rising up to meet her. Kay shakes her head, takes a nip of her drink. A vodka tonic. It’s the only drink she really knows how to order without feeling self-conscious. She hates the taste. The plane jerks again and her mind wanders back to that fantasy. The plane a bright streak of flame across the afternoon sky as she falls. If her dad were here, he’d called her dramatic. _Like your mother,_ the implication would be. Truly the sharpest of barbs from the old man. Kay takes another sip of her drink. He wouldn’t be wrong though. She must be in some kind of bad way if she’s thinking about dying in pieces over Nebraska. She finishes her drink, eyes the untouched bag of pretzels on her neighbor’s tray table. The airplane dips again and a few staccato _whoa_ s come rolling down the plane.

She gets sick over Chicago. Can see the city wrapping around Lake Michigan from over the lip of her barf bag, then her neighbor’s. All she had for dinner was a Pret croissant and half a bag of skittles and they come up hard, a sweet vinegary smell that makes her retch again. Her seatmate bristles, craning his body away from her. “Could you get her a ginger ale?” She hears him whisper to a passing flight attendant.

Kay crawls over him to get to the aisle. The seatbelt sign is still on, but if she doesn’t get the fuck out of that seat, she’s going to lose it. She sways down the aisle toward the cockpit, fingers gripping hard onto the tops of seats as she goes, then slips into the white quiet of the plane’s narrow bathroom. She leans her back against the sink and takes a deep breath, fingers pressing hard on the bridge of her nose. With her stomach settled, she turns around to face the mirror. She shrugs at her reflection. Ambivalent. The hair she’d pulled tightly into a bun that morning is a little hectic now, a few pieces sticking at odd angles. She could use a shower, a good scrub. Her nose is a little runny, but Kay hopes it’s just the plane’s recycled air and not some kind of sinus cold.

She twists to rummage through her purse. Her fingers find the cool metal of her inhaler, curl around it for a moment before they go searching for the altoids she always keeps at the bottom of her purse. Kay plops two into her mouth then learns forward closer to the mirror. She pulls at her lower lids, bares her teeth, wiggles her jaw, then stands back and gives herself another hard look. She can’t remember the last time she got sick on a plane. Christ, probably not since she was a little kid. Kay slaps her cheeks lightly with the pads of her fingers. Once, twice. The plane rocks again.

The wind’s picking up. Rustling leaves across the mostly abandoned parking lot, their edges tinged in yellow. There’s a chill in the air. One that Kay should have anticipated but didn’t. Her windbreaker is modest protection. The ratty old leggings she’s wearing have more than a couple little holes in them. So does the hoody she’s wearing. UCLA Bruins. Belongs to her now ex-boyfriend. Three sizes too big. Kay shivers. She kicks her duffle bag, looks over her shoulder to make sure her backpack is still where she left it, leaning up against the wall. Most of her shit is back at her mom’s place, tucked in boxes under her narrow crawlspace. Most of the rest, she gave away. _Cleansing,_ she told her roommate as she scrawled _free, take whatever_ on the sides of two cardboard boxes where she’d thrown nearly half her closet, _I’m Marie Kondo-ing my life, you know?_ Kay checks her phone. 3:17 pm. The neon in the Hertz sign reflects blearily in a deep puddle at the center of the lot. Kay watches a couple and their kids pile their suitcases into the trunk of a rented minivan. The little girl splashes loudly in one of the puddles, her father yells something sharp from the passenger door.

She checks her phone again. Sighs. Then she dials her mom, taking a deep breath as she presses the phone to her ear. She answers just before the last ring. “Katherine?” Kay presses the phone to her chest, takes a deep, long breath, mouth tipped in a deep frown. She hesitates, then puts the phone back to her ear. “Katherine is that you?” All the letters of her name bleed together, that wine drunk mush mouth that shoves each word into the next.

“Yeah mom, it’s me.” Kay’s not sure why the fuck this is still such a surprise. It’s Friday afternoon where she is, of course she’s sauced. She’d been fucking sauced at ten am on a Sunday last month. Weaving up through the pews to the casket, her ankles wobbling in her heels. Kay and her dad made solid, pained eye contact from across the church, He’d taken hold of his wife’s hand. She’d been staring at Kay’s mother too, rocking her new baby a little too stiffly in her lap. Her mom hasn’t even managed to make it to the reading of the will later that afternoon. Slept it off back at her hotel. Which was just as well. The tremor that rolled through the room when the will left the winery clearly and indisputably to Kay would have knocked her flat. _Didn’t realize gramps hated me that much,_ Kay had said as the broke outside the attorney’s office. Her dad hadn’t exactly been consoling. _Think of it as a summer job_ , he’d said, adjusting his suit jacket, _we haven’t made a bottle of wine in nearly a decade. You’ll mostly just need to make sure the place stays standing until we can help you sell it in the summer._ Kay had scoffed. _Well, it’s not like I’m doing anything else._ A jab. One that didn’t seem to register with him at all. _What was it you majored in again?_ Her stepmother had come up between them, bouncing the baby on her slender hip. _Painting._ Her stepmom made that sound she always makes in her throat. _oh, well isn’t that useful._ “Katherine?” Kay bristles, glancing around the now empty parking lot. “Are you still there, sweetheart?”

“Yeah, sorry, um,” she brushes some stray hairs back behind her ears, “I’m just calling to let you know that I made safe to Portland. Gonna drive up, um, now, I guess. Should be there in a couple of hours.”

“Oh,” a beat of silence, “well that’s nice. Don’t forget to tell your father. I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Another gust of wind comes rushing through the parking lot. “Anyway, I’ll let you go.” She hesitates, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. “Okay, later.” She hangs up, slips her phone into her purse. 

The rental car place is kind of a shit hole. Set way down the road from Portland’s dinky little airport. The shuttle that took her there smelled unsettlingly like a fish market.

It’s a clapboard affair. Looks like a strong wind could blow it away and as Kay heads to the front counter, the windowpanes rattle behind her like the wind’s trying to prove a point. She passes a little kiosk selling postcards and magnets. One of them, a magnet so heavy it looks like it’s pulling away from the metal, is of a ceramic lobster. _MAINE_ emblazoned in big, white letters across its red body.

“Careful out there,” the woman says as she hands Kay the keys to her rental. She’s older. All round shapes. Her nose, her cheeks, even her hair is full of short, round curls. Her glasses are pushed a little low on her nose, their chain heavy with baubles that remind Kay vaguely of buoys.

She closes her fist around the keys. “What now?”

“Nor’easter coming in if youse heading up the coast.” Her accent is so thick Kay has to really stop and listen to have even the faintest idea what she’s saying.

“Well, I don’t know what that is so.” Kay taps her closed fist on the counter, turning to go, then hesitates. She can hear the wind howling outside. “Okay, what’s a Nor’easter?”

A storm. It’s a storm. A big one from the way the woman talked. And at first, Kay figures she’s full of it. The first hour or so of the drive it’s shitty, sure. A little windy, a little ominous with those clouds churning darkly on the horizon, but nothing she can’t handle.

The highway hugs the coast, two narrow lanes. One side a gentle slope upward, packed sand dotted with scrubby growth. A mess of deep purples and ochre. Strands of seaweed that look inky strewn across the pale earth. The other side is much narrower. Wet, jagged rock sloping into the sea. The waves move at a tempo Kay’s never seen in her life. The ocean is _roiling._ And then, without warning, the sky breaks open.

It’s funny how shit works out. Funny like throwing up over the Chicago skyline. Funny like your mom passed out outside the chapel at your grandfather’s funeral, like the way your baby stepsister looks exactly like you. Funny how you’re the only one of your friends who doesn’t have a job postgrad. Funny like a storm rolling in so fast and so hard that it forces you off to the side of the road, crying like a little kid. Funny like the Buick that pulls over to see if you’re alright. Funny like getting inside.

“My name’s Evelyn, dearie. By the way,” the old woman says, tapping ash from her cigarette into the car’s worn leather center console, “but you can call me granny.” She turns and winks, one eye cloudy with a cataract. The car’s interior is all red, like her acrylic nails, and it smells so heavy of cigarettes that Kay’s tempted to crack a window. She doesn’t though of course, because the rain is coming down in such thick sheets that she can barely see the road. Kay glances over at the woman. She’s white-knuckling the wheel, leaned so far forward it looks almost painful. She’s so petite her nose barely comes up over the wheel. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But Kay’s soaked and exhausted and so she just lets herself lean back, tries to close her eyes. The wipers chug, the rush of the rain loud even from inside the car. “So you said you were Roger’s granddaughter then?”

Kay opens one eye, then the other, sits up a little straighter. “Um, yeah. One of them.” Kay plasters on a smile. “I’m Kay.”

“That’s a good name. Pretty name” Kay smiles for real at that. She sniffs, a little embarrassed that she’d cried, even if it had been alone in her car. “Well, I’m sorry to hear about his passing of course, but I sure am glad to meet you. And glad I found ya when I did.”

Kay laughs hoarsely. She’s shivering now, her clothes wet and chilled from the rain. She can hear her duffel bag dripping in the backseat. “Yeah, seriously thank you so much for this. I don’t even know what I would be doing if you hadn’t shown up.”

The old woman waves her off, leaning over to fuss with the dials on her radio. The music’s low, almost too quiet to hear, but Kay listens as it switches from classical to jazz. The car slows and Kay feels them take a wide turn. “You know I’ve lived in this town for almost sixty years and I’ve never once been up to the winery.”

“Is it very far from town?”

Evelyn chuckles. “No, that grandfather of yours just wasn’t very friendly.” Kay’s stomach lurches. She opens her mouth, about to say something – maybe some half-formed apology – when Evelyn puts the car so hard into park that they both jerk forwards. “Well, we’re here.” Kay peers through the windshield. Through the downpour, she can only see a squat, wrought iron gate illuminated by Evelyn’s headlights. A little further up, the faint glow of porch lights. And that’s when the panic sets in. The kind of white-hot, rushing panic that Kay’s not sure she’s ever felt. Because while it was all well and good to imagine coming out here on a sunny California day in July, it’s another beast entirely to be staring this cold, empty piece of land in the face here in a Maine downpour in late August. But Kay doesn’t have time for it to settle before Evelyn is leaning over again, rummaging through the glove box. This close up, she smells like cigarettes, perfume, faintly like sugar. She retrieves a pen and paper, scrawling a number quickly down before tucking it into the front pocket of Kay’s purse. “Now this is Kent Richard’s number. He’s got a tow truck. You call this and tell him that you got it from Granny Evelyn and he’ll be out to sort your car out first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you.” Kay slips her purse strap over her head. “Thank you so much. You have no idea. Seriously.”

“It’s not a problem, dearie.” She pats Kay on the thigh and Kay nearly goes through the roof. Touch-starved. That’s what her roommate called her after she and her last shitty boyfriend broke up. Touch-starved indeed.

Kay thanks her again, profusely, until the old woman finally rolls up her window and starts to drive away. Kay watches her go, duffel bag soaking up water in the mud, arms up to shield herself from the rain with her windbreaker. When her lights fade down the road, Kay turns. The gate looks rusted shut and, in the distance, she can see the grapes. Their branches are gnarled, reaching out not up. She can smell the wine on her mother’s breath, the casket looming in over her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for reading <3 
> 
> If you're curious, the documentary this chapter refers to is real, so if you like to occasionally traumatize yourself on the internet like I do give that a lil google.


	2. Chapter 2

Kay wakes up on the couch, her clothes stuck to her, still a little damp. She sniffles, sitting up to wipe the sleep from her eyes, and for a moment she expects to be back at her mom’s house. Tucked into her narrow bed by the window, surrounded by old, tattered posters, clothes she hasn’t worn in years. The sediment of a life that only half matters anymore. That’s what it felt like all summer. A liminal space in between who she’d been in college and who she was supposed to be now. The person she’d been in high school hanging uncomfortably over her =, ill fitting. Most of her high school friends were gone, any that she’d want to see anyway, and most of her college friends were from out of state. And any that stayed in California moved to the Bay, the longness of the state coming into sharp relief for maybe the first time. So she’d gone to the beach – walked down it, laid on it, stretching herself out for the sun – until the beach became intolerable. Too fucked up. Too many weird memories. Too embarrassing to be seen there alone. She’d gone on three juice cleanses. Lost ten pounds then gained it back when she swapped the juice for In-N-Out. Sat out on her mom’s roof, watching the cypress and poplar sway in the breeze, smoking through the old packs of American Spirits she found in her underwear drawer. _That_ had been great for her lungs. She didn’t paint, not even once from May to August. Her mom said the fumes gave her a headache.

 _You look like Blanche Dubois,_ Kay said to her one morning when she came down to find her mother easing into a glass of wine, a silk robe hanging just slightly open at the front. Something about her body – the thinness, maybe, the creped skin – made her think of Man Ray. Those photographs he did, the ones everyone thinks are supposed to be of the Black Dahlia, pieces of bodies falling into shadow, cut clean from the rest of it, raised ribs like ocean sediment. _You know I don’t keep up with celebrities, Katherine,_ she’d said with a tight smile and when their eyes both drifted to the wine glittering in the morning sun, she’d shrugged, _you can’t waste wine, Katherine, it’ll go to vinegar._

The windowpanes rattle, a sort of cold draft you’d never get in California goes wafting through the room, and the night before comes trickling back. Kay stands, stretching out her arms and shoulders, then glances down at the coffee table. Her phone sits dark on it, one side shattered so badly the screen is nearly unreadable in bright light. She’d done that at a senior week party. Gotten so bored and so weirded out by even the idea of socializing that she’d wandered out onto the balcony, dropped the damn thing over the side in some weirdo destructive impulse that she’d immediately regretted. It’s a miracle it still works at all. The wind rattles the glass again and the whole house seems to groan. Kay pulls the knit blanket she’d slept in over her shoulders and looks up at the high beams of the ceiling. It’s a craftsman. She knows that from the single history of architecture class she took her sophomore year. Can tell by the high pointed ceilings and white eaves that overhang the roof. Big windows that would, theoretically, let in lots of light.

Kay tries to remember her grandfather but finds she really can’t. It’s been years since she saw him in person and as she’d meandered down one of the tables heavy with photographs at the funeral home it was hard to even recognize herself in any of them. _A real fucking son of a bitch,_ her father said the night of the funeral after a couple whiskeys, _the meanest man I ever met._ And maybe he was. The inside of the house certainly isn’t giving her any clues. It’s a little dusty, cobwebs soft and loose in all the corners she can see, but it doesn’t really look lived in, much less worn down. It’s tidy. There’s furniture in all the right spots, of average or above-average quality, but it looks…staged. Too new, too devoid of personality. Like a spread from _Coastal Living_ back in the early 2000’s. Rope rugs and pale teak wood. White trim with robin’s egg accents. There’s a reading nook, a wicker basket. A wreath on the inside of the front door decorated with rope and baubles. There’s a candle on the coffee table in the shape of a conch. Not really the décor one would imagine a _real son of a bitch_ might choose. And it certainly wasn’t her grandmother. She’d died before Kay was even born.

Kay picks up her phone, slides the notifications down. A habit so deeply engrained it barely registers. No messages but a string of likes on Instagram. She’d posted a photo of the big lit LAX sign outside the airport, wrote some shitty caption about _running away for real this time._ She sets it back own only for it to vibrate. Kay practically scrambles to slide it unlocked. It’s her roommate. The contact picture’s from their sophomore year, her throwing up a peace sign outside the library. Kay’s not sure why she never updates it, not even sure, now that she thinks about it, that she even has any new pics of her on her phone.

_U alive_

Kay scoffs, looking around the house. The wind rattles it again. The sky outside those big windows is an overcast, feathery grey. Not even a hint of the sun.

_Ya_

Kay glances over at the couch, rumpled now a little where she’d slept on it. She’d come in the night before, flipped on the light, and just folded. Too tired to head upstairs, too tired to even try to take a shower. At least she remembered to lock the front door, she thinks, looking back to check. She turns again to her phone, sighing.

_Its kinda weird here tbh_

The wind shakes the house again, this time bringing a howl with it. The sound seems to echo through the upstairs and Kay watches the stairs by the front door for maybe a beat too long before the buzzing of her phone brings her attention back.

_O no. that sux_

Kay works her jaw, sniffling a little. Her thumbs hover over the screen. That’s a closing statement if she’s ever seen one. She sniffles again and slips her phone into the pocket of her jeans. Her nose is runny. Probably something she picked up on the plane. _Just_ what she needs. Kay reaches for her purse, presses her fingers to the cold side of her inhaler. Evelyn’s note is crumpled beside it. She goes rigid. The car. _Oh shit._

Kay feels leaps and bounds better as she waits for the tow driver to make the short, steep crawl up to the house. Scrubbed clean in the shower’s surprisingly hot water, dressed in a pair of jeans that still smell like her mom’s detergent. Whatever blew through town last night seems to be gone now. The sky’s a little darker than it had been that morning, more textured. Dappled clouds looming over the ocean. She can see just the tiniest sliver of the water from her spot on the porch. But the wind’s died down. A few fallen branches out near the front of the house the only evidence that anything came through here at all. Makes her feel even more lividly embarrassed that she’d stopped on the side of the road to cry of all things. Kay rises to her tiptoes to try and get a better look at the car, exhales hard when she sees it looks fine.

The tow looks ancient though, rusted and worn out, but the man who swings out of it is younger than she expected. Early forties, maybe a little older. He’s in a pair of blue coveralls, a ballcap that he’s pulled down over his eyes with _U.S. Marine Corps_ embroidered on the front. She’s not sure she’s seen a man dressed like that ever in her life.

He’s quiet. Seems about zero percent interested in the small talk Kay’s laying on him. Which she can respect, even if it does feel weirdly like a rejection. Everything’s starting to feel that way honestly and she’s so busy thinking about her roommate’s weirdly short text that she almost doesn’t notice that he’s looking up past her as she talks, back at the house. Kay pauses. There’s a look in his eye, kinda freaky really. She stops counting out what she owes him from the envelope of crisp twenties her dad gave her before the move and cocks her head. “What?”

He jumps. “Sorry?”

She glances back at the house, then again at him. “What were you looking at?”

“Nothing.” He tips the brim of his cap at her, folding the money carefully into his pocket, then starts back down the drive toward the tow. Kay watches him go, watches the tow pull slowly back onto the road, then she looks up at the house. Whatever he’d seen there, Kay doesn’t see it now.

She goes to the beach because she has nothing better to do. Because laying on the couch watching _Murder She Wrote_ and some old ass episodes of _Rick Steve’s Europe_ on her dead grandpa’s shitty tv is making her feel really fucking depressed. And the beach, even if its miles away from what she’s ever known in her life as far as beaches are concerned, has at least the potential to make her feel better. 

Kay pulls into the narrow dirt parking lot off the road. The sign for _Birch Point Bluff Beach_ looks about as weatherworn as it comes, the name barely visible now that most the paint’s been chipped off it. It’s colder out here than it had been at the house, a dense fog settling over the sand as Kay heads down toward it. There’s not much sand honestly, not really. Most of the beach is made up of smooth, wet rock that sends her more than once scrambling for her balance. The sea is different without the sun, nothing like the sun-baked shores she grew up on. This is layered, violent almost. Kay holds her arms out to try and keep her balance as she heads toward the shore, sneakers catching more than once on some of the dense, dark scrub that seems to sprout out from everywhere between the rocks. The air smells briny, thick with salt. It reminds her of a fish market back home. There’s something fresh about it though, tangibly different, and the way the fog lands softly on her skin makes her feel briefly ethereal. And it’s then, as she goes to toe the tide, the wind sailing off the ocean whipping her hair around her face, that she notices she’s not alone on the beach. She sees movement just out of the corner of her eye, jumps a little before making out the shape of it. Kay steps back, squinting toward the figure. It’s a woman. Pretty sure at least. She’s crouched down, an old school camera clutched in her hands. The fog is so dense around her that for a moment Kay thinks it might be a trick of the light. But then she stands, flipping the camera to adjust the lens. “Hey!” The girl about jumps out of her skin and Kay takes the opportunity to close the distance between them. It’s an impulse really, an old habit. One that she doesn’t even consider until the girl takes two quick steps back.

They’re about the same height and, if Kay’s a good enough judge, probably around the same age. Kay glances over at the spot where she’d been crouched but sees only slick rock and spray. “What are you photographing?”

“What the fuck?” The girl yanks her camera away, holding it close to her chest. Her hair’s a mess of blonde curls pulled into a ponytail at the crown of her head, a few strands stick to her neck, wet from the ocean spray. “You can’t just sneak up on somebody like that!”

Kay slips her hands into the pockets of her jeans and cocks her head. “Sorry.”

“You don’t seem very sorry, Jesus Christ.” The girl takes a few steps backward and scowls. She’s in an impossibly tight pair of jeans and a bubblegum colored raincoat. She’s got a couple golden barrettes at the front of her hair, a charm bracelet that glints even in the grey weather. She tucks her camera into the leather bag she has slung over her shoulder, embarrassment passing quickly over her face.

Kay nods toward the bag. “Seriously, what were you photographing out here?”

“Nothing. None of your business” she says with a quick wave, immaculate pink varnish on her nails, “what are you doing out here, anyway? I’ve never seen you in my life.”

Kay scoffs. “Well, it’s my first time on this beach, so.”

She crinkles her nose. “Are you some kind of tourist or something? You’re dumb as rocks if you came here for a vacation instead of Bar Harbor.”

“I just moved here actually.”

The girl bristles. “Wow, even dumber.” She pulls her coat closer around her. “Anyway, since you’re obviously into prowling around the beach in shit weather, here’s some free advice from a local: don’t go in the fucking water. At least like ten tourists die in it every year.” There’s something about that, about all the pink and gold she’s wearing as she says it, about the gloss on her lips as she sneers it, that Kay likes immediately. And she’s about to say that but the girl’s already turned her back on her, whipping her hair around as she heads toward the lot on the other side of where Kay came in.

A sharp wind kicks off the waves and Kay pulls her coat closer around her. She looks out toward the ocean. She’s never seen waves this violent, never in her whole life. The water has lost its blue, as grey as the sky. Yeah, she bets a lot of people do die under those waves. “Charming,” she says to no one in particular.

Kay checks her phone when she’s back in the car, the heat blowing hot and dry from the vents. Ten new likes on Instagram, no new messages. She sets her phone in the center console and sniffles, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her windbreaker. She’s done a lot of stupid shit recently but _this,_ coming out here, this might be the dumbest shit by far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 <3


	3. Chapter 3

It’s almost midnight when the wind starts again. Nothing like the gale forces that forced her off the road the night before, but enough for those creaking sounds she’d heard in the morning take on a new, eerie quality. Kay’s finishing up dinner, plopped down on the couch, cross-legged, balancing the plate on one knee. Plain pasta with salt. It was all she could find in the pantry. She’s not sure what she expected, but a single box of pasta and a dented can of great northern beans really wasn’t it. At least he had salt, even if she had to open the canister and break up the big chunks with her fingers. And her eating schedule is fucked. Just like it’s always been really. Even in her first two years of college, when food was an easy rhythmic three squares a day in the caf, she would still find herself crawling toward midnight without a single piece of food in her stomach, settling in with half a pizza and a bag of chips long after she should have gone to bed. Some habits die hard, apparently. Kay swirls the last few noodles around her fork and leans back, pulling the knit blanket higher up on her shoulders.

She’s been watching tv because she doesn’t really want to just sit scrolling through her phone. _That_ has been a fucking minefield. Familiar people in new places. Places that feel now like an entire world away. _Come visit!,_ one of her friends in New York dmed her. Kay googled the distance. Five hours and some change and in that moment the distance had felt entirely uncrossable. A place that could exist only in Kay’s imagination made all the more distant feed full of clinging silk dresses, balconies with a haze of lights in the background, glasses raised in cheers. _Publishing_ , Kay thinks, she’d gotten a job in publishing, though it’s hard to remember. There’d been so much of that at graduation. All her friends tucked in with their parents. _Internship_ that, _grad school_ this. _Just gonna work on my art,_ she’d said at least a dozen times not knowing then or now what the hell she’d even meant by that. So, yeah, she’s just been watching basic cable, listening to the wind and the rain lash the sides of the house. Feeling like she might as well be on the moon.

Rick Steve’s rolling his blooper reel, laughing and butchering Portuguese with the beautiful vistas of Lisbon’s beaches at his back and Kay leans forward to set her empty plate down on the coffee table. She takes the conch candle in her hand, lets it weigh heavily in her palm. Its surface is slick and glossy. Cheap, really. Like whoever bought it picked it up at the same tchotchke shop she’d seen at the car rental place. _Up next,_ the narrator says in her lilting voice as the credits roll, _spooky stories from America’s New England coast._ Kay perks up, glancing from her dark phone back to the tv. _Join us,_ she says as the screen changes to a lighthouse cast in black and white, animated bats spinning around the very top, _for Coastal Haunts._ Kay sits up a little straighter. The house is dark, just the light from the kitchen filtering across the wood in the entryway, the faint glow of the porchlights through the stained glass on the front door. She really probably shouldn’t watch. It’s got a high potential to fuck her right up. Once she goaded the few people milling about a dwindling party to put on _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ but could only get past the very first slashing scene in the van before she slipped off to heave in the apartment’s filthy bathroom. She’d done the same with Aronofsky’s _Pi._ Took too many edibles then had to sneak off to go crouch in the dorm’s narrow hallway to try and keep her cool. So yeah, it’s maybe not the best choice. But there’s nothing else on and the first five minutes seem to mostly be shaky shots of the insides of lighthouses slapped with a black and white filter. The narrator drones in a low baritone about ships smashed to pieces against rocks, lighthouse keepers throwing themselves into the ocean, no one noticing their absence until the light flickers eventually out. Kay pulls the blanket a little closer around her, sniffles. It beats scrolling through her Instagram at least.

It isn’t scary until she tries to go to bed. And even then, only barely. The kind of fright that has you leaving the hall light on, listening just a little extra hard at the sound of the wind. Her apartment building after graduation had been like that. Cavernous almost. So big that she couldn’t possibly keep track of it or of any of the creaking, aching sounds it made as spring turned to summer. It’s why she’s picked the small corner bedroom in this house. With its front-facing window and lightly sloped ceiling. The smallness makes it feel contained, easily controlled. She can tip her suitcase in front of the door, take a quick look in the narrow closet and under the bed and then not worry about it. Besides, the master bedroom still has some of her grandfather’s clothes hanging in the closet, an ashtray on the bedside table with a cigarette butt inside, like it just burned out. She _really_ doesn’t want to fuck with that. Kay ducks down to check under the bed, then stands to slide her jeans down her legs. She hasn’t unpacked any of her shit yet, decides it would probably be fine to sleep another night in the same hoodie. Not like she’s going to see anybody anyway. The wind howls. It sounds, ominously, like it’s rolling right through the attic. She pulls the quilt up over her head.

At first, she thinks it’s a dream. Because it feels like one. The whole room cast in blue, just the faintest light that comes sweeping in and over the bed from outside. And there’s something on her chest. Something heavy. Kay feels down her body, searching for the source of the weight and finds nothing but her own shirt. She opens her eyes a little more, reaches up to wipe the sleep from them, then tries to take a deep breath. Her chest locks itself in. She gasps, sitting bolt upright, turning once she starts coughing. The coughing doesn’t last. Her lungs wring themselves out. Kay tries to take another ragged breath, but it doesn’t make it past her throat. Just the faintest, barest slip of air struggling into her lungs. She scrambles out of bed, landing hard onto her knees. She grabs her purse hard by the strap, pulling it across the hardwood and flipping it over, dumping its contents onto the rug. Her fingers won’t work right, fumbling as she yanks the cap off her inhaler. The five seconds it takes to shake the thing feels like a whole fucking lifetime and by the time she presses it to her lips, she’s trembling all over.

It tastes bitter and metallic and she knows that if she’s tasting it at all, she’s not using it right, so she doubles down until she’s bent over on the rope rug, coughing and heaving and, embarrassingly, crying. And that first full breath that comes rushing into her lungs, even as it leaves with a chorus of hacking, makes her cry harder. Relief, bright humiliation even though she’s alone. Kay stays like that for a while, bent over the rug, clutching her inhaler in one hand, the other fisted in the fabric of her pullover.

After a while, she settles, her breath still loud and ragged. The house is quiet and then it starts to creak. Creaks like the whole house is pulling itself up from the foundations, like the wind is going to rip it of the ground like a root. And then she remembers that the narrator on the show had said something about how ghosts in coastal areas seek out houses to take shelter from the beating waves in and now all she can see in her mind’s eyes is some wisp of a spirit gliding across the hallway of the house toward her door. She stands and flips on the light. The room is empty, the house quiet again. A tiny sliver of light sits on the horizon and the trees that line the road toss in the wind outside. Kay rests her hand on her sternum and closes her eyes. She tips her head back, taking slow, shallow breaths until her chest eases itself a little more open. The first respiratory therapist she ever went to taught her that, stethoscope cold on the bare skin of her little back.

Kay opens her eyes again. She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s absolutely – her stomach lurches and then she’s scrambling down the hall, hacking. She drops hard to her knees on the tile and retches into the toilet, gripping onto the sides. She comes back up shaky, scraping her hair from her forehead. “Jesus fucking Christ.” Her breath sounds like a wheeze, loud in the empty house. She reaches up to turn the bathroom light on, shifts so she can shut the door, can stop looking down that empty hallway. Expecting something to appear. Fuck that show was a dumb idea.

Kay leans back onto the cool ring of the toilet, coughing until her throat feels raw and her lungs heavy. She stands, heading over to the sink to wash her mouth out. The steroid is already making her feel shaky. She runs the water hot to try and warm her chilled hands. Kay can’t remember if she’s ever thrown up after an attack, tries to wrack her brain and remember if that’s one of the possible side effects of the rescue inhaler. She doesn’t think so. It’s probably just nerves. She would do that sometimes as a kid, get so worked up she’d vomit. Or maybe she shouldn’t be scavenging around in that shitty, mostly empty pantry for her food. Maybe that’s it. A lone creak sounds from the hallway. Kay freezes, glancing over at the door then back at her own reflection. The creaking stops only to be followed by that awful howling of the wind through the attic. “Oh, fuck that.” Kay rushes down the hall, trying to keep her eyes down. She grabs her jeans from a heap on the floor and yanks them up her legs. “I’m not doing any more of this shit tonight.”

She stops on Main Street, because it seems like the natural place to go. Maybe the only place to go if the dense trees it backs up to are any indication. She parks a few blocks up from the dock, cracks her windows so she can smell the salt of the sea. There’s a few boats bobbing in the water, hulls caked with barnacles. The sun is rising slowly now, just that pale early light spilling over the street.

It’s a cute street, all things considered. A long line of clapboard buildings. Most white, some faded pastels. One in the center of the street is bright pink and blue, a wooden sign swings from wrought iron fixtures. _Jodi’s Dress Barn_ carved into the front. It’s cute. Quaint. Sort of peaceful really even though Kay’s still shaking like a leaf, her chest still tight. She doesn’t get attacks like that all the often, usually has more warning and she glances over at her purse to make sure her inhaler is still sitting on it. It is, right at the top. The blue plastic a little scuffed where she dug her nails in. She’d been four the first time her lungs betrayed her. At the top of the slide on a day so brilliantly sunny she remembers it only through the glare of the sun on the metal. It had been another child’s mother who scooped her up and rushed to a payphone to call for help. Her dad hadn’t noticed her absence until the sirens had come screaming down the street.

Kay takes a timid, shallow breath then looks back out the front windshield. The street’s a little uneven. Sort of patchy, a couple potholes big enough to really swallow a tire. A few maple branches stretch long over the asphalt, cocooning the street. The street itself slopes down toward the dock and while it was wide open ocean down near the old house, here in town it leads to a little inlet. Kay can see a small sliver of land across the now placid water. It seems to be, as far as she can tell, populated only by trees. Lonely, really.

She bounces her legs on the balls of her feet and lays her hand again on her sternum. She’s probably in the clear, everything she knows about her lungs tells her that she is. That all she needs to do is take it easy for a day or two and she’ll be just fine. But there’s something so lonely about this town that spikes a quiet little panic inside of her. Hell, she’s not sure if there’s even a doctor here. Not even sure what she would do if she had an attack the rescue inhaler couldn’t handle. Christ, she doesn’t want to alone in her head with dumb, scary thoughts like that. She rests her forehead on the steering wheel and unlocks her phone. There’s got to something open in this nowhere ass town. Even if it’s Walmart. Just somewhere to go that isn’t the house.

It’s a restaurant, actually. Which works fine for Kay even if it does surprise her. That plain pasta dinner hadn’t really hit the spot and when a diner was the first result for her _things open near me search,_ she’d immediately conjured up the image of a heaping plate of fries and a milkshake so cold it chills the outside of the glass. It’s an easy choice. 

The diner itself is just a few blocks from the dock. _The Stardrop_ written in big metal letters on its roof. There’s a billboard too, right out in front, like the kind they have outside of churches. This one reads, in faded block letters: _Lobstah Season. Come ‘n’ get it._ Cute. Sort of.

Kay parks the car in the back lot and triple checks that her inhaler’s still in her purse before she heads across the lot toward the street. The blue awnings on the outside of the place look like they’ve seen better days, but the white clapboard exterior has been scrubbed almost meticulously clean. Warmth billows out as Kay opens the door and steps inside. The interior’s narrow like a railcar, but the rounded ceiling makes it feel a little airier. Which she appreciates, her chest still aching.

Most of the pretty meager space is taken up the long linoleum counter on one side, a few big cutouts revealing its galley kitchen. One the other side, a single row of booths. The windows beside the booths could use a good scrub down, the blinds a little crooked, but the light inside the diner is soft and golden and it smells like frying potatoes, a coffee maker bubbling in the background. 

Kay heads past a display case heavy with pies and slides into the booth closest to the door. The plasticky fabric squeaks as she sits down, a little frayed at the corners. “Well hello there.” The man who greets her has the rosiest cheeks she’s ever seen on a person in real life. His handlebar mustache comes down over his lips, but she can tell as he lays a laminated menu in front of her that he’s smiling. “Don’t see too many new faces this late in the summer.” He chuckles. “Or this early in the morning.”

Kay clears her throat. Her chest twinges a little as she does. “I, uh, just moved here actually.” She doesn’t try to come up with an excuse for why she’s out just before five am.

The man raps his knuckles on the table and smiles even bigger. “Well, a warm welcome to Pelican Town then. Name’s Gus.”

Kay shakes his outstretched hand. “Kay.” Her voice is a little raspy and the sound of it makes her chest tighten all over again. She sniffles, that stupid fucking whatever she picked up on the plane still sticking around.

“Well, I’ll bet you want some coffee then..”

She manages a smile up at him, her lungs expanding a little easier now. “That’d be great, thank you.”

Kay’s settling in, fidgeting with the saltshaker, fighting the urge to check her instagram, when she sees that she’s not the diner’s only customer. He’s tucked back at the far end of the diner, so absorbed in his newspaper that he doesn’t seem to have noticed her come in. Kay sits up a little straighter, squints to try and get a better look at him. He’s in a button-down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A red tie that’s a little rumpled, pulled a little loose around his neck like he’d worried it free. Kay watches him take off his glasses to clean them with a cloth he produces from his slacks. It’s hard to tell his age. Older than her for sure, and a handlebar mustache that gives him a certain dated Tom Selleck energy, but he’s got a full head of curly chestnut hair and when he lifts his arms to put his glasses back on Kay can see that his forearms are nicely muscled. Jesus. Touch starved indeed.

She yelps when Gus sets her plate down in front of her and this time the man down at the end of the diner does glance up. He does a quick double-take before returning to the newspaper and Kay settles back to look at Gus. “Eat up,” he says, rapping his knuckles again on the table.

She cracks the yolk with a single tap, watches as it drips down her pile of hashbrowns. The bacon looks similarly lush. Thick and fatty. Kay spreads a spoonful of rind flecked marmalade across a thick piece of buttered toast and takes a long breath. Her lungs feel fine. Rattled, but fine and she lets herself sink back into the booth, tries to relax into the quiet hum of the diner. Especially now that the sun has broken across the horizon, that slow quiet of early morning hanging in the air 

Her phone vibrates, pulling her hard from the dreamy niceness she’d sunk into. She picks it up, hands still a little unsteady from the inhaler, and frowns when she sees the text is from her dad.

_You make it there okay?_

Kay rolls her eyes and slides the notification away. The food seems a little less appetizing now, the warm glow from the pie case a little less nice. She sniffles again, wiping her nose on her sleeve. A squeak from the far booth draws her attention. The man’s gotten up. He drains his coffee then leans over to set the cup neatly back on the table before shrugging his jacket over his shoulders, green like the pines that line the diner’s backlot. He nods to Gus as he passes, and the cook fixes him with a broad smile. “See you tomorrow, Doc. Get some sleep.” The man chuckles, nodding softly to himself, then he glances at Kay, just briefly, before heading out onto the sidewalk. Kay watches him slide into the old station wagon parked on the side of the road, watches him pull away. She turns back to her phone. No new messages.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3\. 
> 
> I hope you are all doing alright in these crazy ass times.


	4. Chapter 4

The shower helps. Makes her feel less scruffy. Some at least. The tile in the bathroom’s a little dingy but the water comes out of the showerhead almost boiling and before long the little room fills with steam. Kay breathes it in, flexing her lungs. Deep, then slow and shallow again. Her chest still aches, just the last residue of that claustrophobic fear, but less than it did even when she woke up that morning. She reaches up to crack the bathroom’s high, narrow window, cool air drifting over her. It smells like brine, a hint of pine. There’s a cluster of them back behind the house. She saw them that morning from the kitchen window.

Kay scraps her nails through her hair and takes another deep breath. She’d gotten her nails done with her mother a week before she left. Had to beg off acrylics and gels. _They’ll get ruined anyway,_ she told the nail tech, _I use a lot of chemicals for my work._ Not like she’s done much of that lately. Kay examines her nails. Neat, a little bit of clear varnish that’s chipped on the edges from where she’s picked at it. She’d watched her mother’s hands the whole time. Watched them shake. Kay reaches over to shut off the water, takes another deep breath of the steam.

The sun helps even more. Kay closes her eyes as she stands, wrapped only in a towel, on the front porch and lets it warm her skin. It’s chilly, still, hardly what you could call summer, but leaps and bounds nicer than it had been her first night here. Kay opens her eyes, crosses her arms over her chest and takes another long, deep breath. It feels luxurious after yesterday. The sky’s a sort of tepid blue, even with the sun high in it, but Kay can see for miles now. It’s changed the landscape, this absence of clouds. The whole place unfolds in front of her. In the daylight, the grape trellises don’t have the same ominous quality as the clouds and the night gave them. The wood looks almost burnished, their leaves a spectacular green, wide and flat as they rest against the vines. She doesn’t see any grapes, wonders if that’s because the vines have been so badly neglected or if it just isn’t the right season.

From the house’s high spot on the hill, Kay can see the way the highway cuts narrow across the coast, rocks sloping down into the ocean. The ocean beyond seems to stretch on forever, disappearing over the horizon line. A blue shades darker than she’s ever seen water be. Quieter now than it was, lapping at the jagged rocks almost gently. And further down, toward town, all she can see are trees. Billowy maples and softly leaning oaks, every so often the pointed top of a pine tree poking through the leaf cover. Kay spots the very top of a clocktower over the trees, so white it seems to refract sunlight back toward her. The breeze rolls through again, a little chillier than it had been before. Kay heads back inside.

She doesn’t bother unpacking. The notion that she’s staying here for any length of time at all hasn’t really sunk in and even though she can’t conceptualize being anywhere else, trying to imagine herself still here next month, or even next week, gives her a headache. Unpacking seems futile, irresponsible even. Or maybe she’s just lazy. They’re neck and neck.

Kay picks the first pair of jeans she can reach, pulls them out of her duffel only to find they aren’t jeans at all. She unfolds the overalls and tries not to think about the weird way they’re making her feel. They were a couple dollars from a thrift store a few blocks from campus, distressed on one knee, missing a button on one of the straps. One of many when she started wearing them all the time to the studio, but these are the only ones that managed to survive the great graduation culling of her closet. They didn’t spark joy but…they’re a little heavier with memories. One of her friends in the department embroidered big sunflowers onto the legs their junior year. Took it upon herself as she waited for the layers of her prints to dry. The yarn’s a little frayed now but when Kay presses the denim to her nose, she can still smell the faint chalk of gesso, the bitter scent of linseed oil. Their whole studio floor smelled like it that year. A whole cohort of painters and printmakers. The lone sculptor out at the quarry for his metalwork. Kay holds the overalls out in front of her again, tries to see them as just a piece of clothing. But she met her last boyfriend in these overalls. _Nice jeans,_ he’d said toeing the embroidery with his sneaker one sunny morning on the quad. Kind of a douchbag really. Couldn’t find the clit with a flashlight. Dumb to be nostalgic like this about shit that’s only a few years old. She slips them on anyways. They’re warm from the bottom of the duffel.

Kay looks over her shoulder at her own reflection, then flips around, adjusting her shirt so it lays just right. It’s a t-shirt she cropped forever ago. She fusses with her hair, fluffing it with her fingers. Her roommate was the one who cut it, just. under her chin. Shit, probably a year ago now. In their shitty windowless bathroom with a pair of scissors she’d been using to make a collage, bits of glue still stuck to the blades. It makes Kay’s cheekbones look really wide, makes her look sort of flippy, easy going. She _is_ easy going, Kay reminds herself, resting her foot on the toilet seat so she can see all of the embroidery in the mirror. She opens her camera, cocks her head. She parts her lips, hold her phone in front of her sternum, fingers splayed.

Kay takes ten photos before she’s satisfied that she has one worth posting. Scrolls back and forth between two until she finally just picks one. She cycles through filters before figuring that makes her seem like a try hard and settling on the natural light. _Bringing my own sunshine to Maine,_ she types as the caption, grimacing. Kinda dumb. She posts it anyway, scrolling down to see what everyone else is doing. Nothing really. More than her, though.

Kay’s still scrolling as she heads down the stairs, still scrolling as she opens the pantry. Which is why it takes her longer than it should to realize she’s standing in front of an empty cabinet, just a single can of beans laying on its side. “Right.” She opens postmates only to find an empty screen. Not a single restaurant that delivers in a forty miles radius. “ _Right.”_

The shop smells like sawdust. A warm scent, really. Like the woodworking studio back on campus. A little earthy, almost honeyed. And the inside matches. The raw wood on the walls and floor catch the light filtering in from the windows and make the whole room look golden. It’s not very big, but Kay guesses that calling it a general store sort of implies a certain brevity. There’s a corkboard just inside the door. Fliers tacked over every inch of space, some overlapping, some outright covering others. _Local man turns 103,_ reads one newspaper clipping, _says he owes his longevity to clam diet. Sagadahoc county angler breaks state record with 75-pound striped bass,_ reads another. The high school mascot in town is the mariners, their 2018 football roster hangs just below the clippings. The door shuts with a whoosh behind her, the bell on it jangling.

“Morning!” The man behind the counter at the back calls, “Welcome to Pierre’s!” He reminds Kay of her third-grade art teacher. Shaggy brown hair parted down the middle, wire glasses. He’s got a russet button down on open over a t-shirt. A casual, kind of nostalgic look turned a little on its side when Kay gets a glimpse of the size of the watch around his wrist.

She gives him a little wave. “Hello.” Kay tries to remember the last time she ever greeted a stranger back home, stuffs her hands into her pockets so it doesn’t look like she doesn’t know what to do with them. There are a couple produce stands to her left, some narrow wooden aisles to her right. In the opposite corner by the door, Kay spots a big glass-doored freezer. She can see a few cases of beer, some frozen pizzas. The pizzas are probably her best bet, some dry pasta maybe. Tortillas, cheese. Easy stuff, quick stuff. Though she doesn’t really have anything going on, doesn’t have anything to save time for. She checks her phone. 35 likes on the new post. Her old roommate commented a sun emoji. Kay frowns and slips her phone back into her pocket.

“Are you Pierre then?” Kay asks as she sets her basket down on the counter.

“What gave me away, huh?” He says with a chuckle.

Kay laughs a little nervously, not really sure where she meant to go with the tease. But before she can think of something to say, a woman comes up beside her. She slams one of those manual price guns down on the counter. “Finished,” she says, clacking the black varnish of her nails once on the wood. Kay turns. They size each other up, maybe without even meaning to. If Kay had to guess, she’d say they’re probably around the same age. The girl maybe a couple years younger than she is. She’s got the kind of deep purple hair that Kay knows had to have taken an absolute fuckton of bleach and dye and a nose ring that looks a little too big for her nostril. She’s lanky, a pair of black leggings over her colt-like legs and a Misfits t-shirt knotted at the waist. The t-shirt would get her mocking side eyes at most parties Kay used to go to, but she’s got such a heavy scowl that Kay thinks she might be the real deal. “I have homework to do,” she says to no one in particular.

Pierre frowns, taking the price gun in his hand. “Abigail, did you finish getting all of the-“ But she’s already walking away, heading back toward a door on the far wall. She slams it so hard the cans on a nearby shelf rattle. He sighs and starts to ring Kay up. “Sorry about that.” Kay shrugs, fights the urge to open her phone. “So, you’re all in one piece, I see.” He says when he’s down to the last few items.  
Kay blinks at him. “Sorry, what?”

He chuckles. “You’re Roger’s granddaughter, right? Heard Evelyn picked you up a few nights ago,” he looks at her over the rim of his glasses, “during the storm.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. To both of those.” She clears her throat. “Word travels fast, I guess.”

Pierre laughs, tucking her groceries into a paper bag. “Very fast up here. Especially in the off season.”

The store darkens a few degrees, like clouds have passed over the sun. She glances out the window near the counter. A few clouds are moving in off the ocean. “So, when exactly is the off season?”

“We’re at the tail end of it.”

Kay looks back at him. “Really?”

Pierre folds the top of the bag over, smoothing it into a neat crease. “Yep. Lot of folks come into town for the fall color. We’re pretty dead in the summer.” 

“Oh.” Kay slides her card across the counter. She hadn’t really thought of that, but it makes sense. Autumn in New England and all that. She glances down the counter. There’s a little stack of jams and jellies by the register. All local from the looks of them, their handwritten labels just a touch crooked. Kay plucks a jar of blueberry jam and slides it across the counter. “Um, this too.”

Pierre grins, raising the jar like he’s toasting her. “Good choice.” Kay smiles politely, drumming her nails on the counter. “So, you’re up at the old winery then?” From the corner of her eye, Kay sees a flash of purple. Abigail’s returned, slipping out of the doorway. At the mention of the winery, her gaze darts upward. She raises a single eyebrow at Kay before ducking into an aisle, disappearing behind the canned goods.

Kay clear her throat again, turns back to Pierre. “Uh, yeah. For now, at least.”

He nods, looking thoughtfully out the window. “I did wonder if they were gonna sell the place once I heard about your old man.” Kay shifts on her feet. She hasn’t really thought about it. Doesn’t really care honestly, but just the mention of it makes her stomach turn a little. “Well,” Pierre says, rapping his knuckles on the counter, “don’t be a stranger.” 

The sun’s playing hide and seek behind the clouds, the temperature dropping steadily as Kay heads down the sidewalk toward where she parked the car. A few gulls circle the road, crying loudly. A foghorn sounds way in the distance. The air smells like salt, like coming rain.

Kay glances over at the building beside the general store, so close they share a wall. It’s another white clapboard affair, though the paint on its exterior looks a little more worn, its blue trim a little chipped. The wooden sign hanging over the awning reads _Clinic._ Beneath that: _Dr. Harvey T. Greene, MD._ Kay’s hand drifts to her pocket, fingers curling around her inhaler. So, they have a doctor’s office out here, at least. There’s that. She probably won’t die grasping blue-fingered at her throat then. 

Kay trips on a raised edge of the sidewalk. She catches herself but stumbles into a shallow puddle and before she can stop it, the canvas of her sneakers are soaked. "Shit!’ She stumbles out of the puddle, her shoes soaked in the chilly water. Kay looks around, mortified, but there’s no one the sidewalk with her. Canvas shoes, she decides, lifting her foot so she can examine the damage, _not_ ideal for Maine.

_Jodi’s Dress Barn_ seems like an obvious choice. It’s just a few blocks down from the general store and with dark clouds threatening in off the ocean, Kay doesn’t want to chance a drive down the interstate to one of the big box stores. Hell, she’s worried about getting back to the house if it starts to rain again, her meltdown behind the wheel two nights ago still fresh on her mind. 

The shop smells first like potpourri. A wave of that floral, sugared scent as soon as she steps inside. It’s a wide room with high vaulted ceilings but the sheer amount of wall to wall clothing make it feel a little cramped, almost tent-like. The clothes themselves seem stuck between almost daringly dated and purposefully neo-bohemian. Long, patterned maxi skirts, loose cable sweaters, thick belts cinched at the waist. She spots a row of rainboots on the far wall and is about to make a bee line for them when she notices that the girl behind the counter is the same one she’d met on the beach. Her blond hair’s down this time, falling in soft curls around her face, but it’s unmistakably her. Kay watches her flip slowly through a magazine, dog earing pages here and there. Her hair keeps falling into her face and she brushes it behind her ears with increasing irritation. She glances up, then straightens way up as they lock eyes. Just like on the beach, Kay can’t seem to help herself. She drifts toward the register. The girl stiffens, takes a cursory look around the store, then leans heavy on her elbows. “So,” she says once Kay is in earshot, “looks like you didn’t go for a swim after all, huh?”

Kay laughs, leaning up against the counter. She’s not sure why she isn’t just heading over to the boots and getting on with her day. But she isn’t. “No, lived to see another day.”

The girl rolls her eyes but doesn’t move from her spot at the counter. She glances over toward the back of the store then straightens up, brushing some hair back with a manicured hand. “So, you’re the girl who moved into the winery, huh?” Kay brushes her own hair back, suddenly acutely aware that probably everyone in town knows who she is. “I heard that place is haunted. See any ghosts?”

Kay looks at her. She remembers the creak in the attic, her lungs aching at the memory of herself bent over the rug and her fingers drift toward the pocket where she has her inhaler before stopping herself, setting her hands instead on the glass of the counter. “Who says it’s haunted?”

The girl shrugs, her curls bouncing at the movement. “Pretty much everybody.”

“Oh. Good.”

Kay sees just the faintest hint of a wry smile on the girl’s face before it quickly disappears. She squares her shoulders, leans again down on her elbows. “So, I heard you’re from California.”

Kay cocks her head. She glances again over at the rainboots but doesn’t make a move toward them. She looks instead at the little display of charm bracelets by the register. The metal’s cool against her fingertips when she touches them. One has a little golden blueberry by the clasp, another an intricate little lighthouse. “Really? Where’d you hear that?”

This time the girl laughs hard, a full almost bawdy sound that she seems immediately embarrassed by. She recovers quickly, flipping her hair back over her shoulder. “This town is so fucking small. That’s the first thing you should know, so don’t plan on keeping any secrets. People here sniff that shit out right away.”

“Well, I don’t have any secrets so…”

She scoffs, glancing again over toward the back. Kay figures that’s probably where her boss is, wonders vaguely if there’s ever more than a single customer in the store at once. The girl straightens her shoulders a little, raises a single eyebrow. “Where in California?”

“Los Angeles area.”

The girl nods, looking a little off center. Kay can tell she’s trying to place her and it’s then, with a sudden jolt, that Kay realizes she has no idea where she stands socially in this town. No fucking clue how she looks to the people inside it. The thought excites her. Surprising really, considering how much she usually cares about that shit. “That’s cool.” She fidgets with one of her earrings. “Whadya do there?”

“I’m an artist. So…that, I guess.”

The girl perks up immediately. “Really? What’s your medium?”

Kay cocks her head, remembers how intricate her camera had been on the beach, how carefully she’d tucked it back into her bag.“Paint.”

She fidgets again, receding back. “Oh. That’s cool.”

“You’re a photographer, right?”

“I take photos sometimes, yeah. Like everybody.”

Kay scoffs. “I mean you had a pretty souped up rig for _taking photos sometimes_ or whatever _._ ”

The girl just shrugs, then she looks right at Kay, narrowing her eyes. They’re the color the sky outside isn’t but should be. “Are you on Instagram?” She purses her lips. “For your art.”

Kay’s heart leaps a little. There’s an almost grade school loneliness that’s been working its way through her. For how long she isn’t really sure. Definitely since graduation and now that she’s standing here in this nowhere town it feels amplified tenfold. “Yeah, I’ve got an Instagram.”

The girl holds out a manicured hand, her bracelets jingling as she moves. “Haley.”

Kay takes it. “Kay.”

Haley gives her a long onceover, then crosses her arms over her chest. “Cool outfit.”

Whatever the clouds on the horizon were threatening that afternoon it hasn’t materialized by evening and as Kay sits out on the front porch of the house, she can feel the temperature steadily rising. She wonders, as she cracks open a beer she picked up from the general store, if there’s something about the Atlantic that makes the weather like this. Some chaos that fucks with the weather on a molecular level. The Pacific doesn’t do shit like this. Not in Southern California at least. Kay’s phone vibrates. She glances over, setting the beer down on the porch’s worn wood.

 _❀_ _haley_hanson__ _✿_ _is now following you_

Kay slides open the notification, leans back to rest on the house’s wood paneling. The sun is starting to dip in the sky, casting a long reflection in the water. Haley’s profile picture is a close up of her face, lit so brightly by the sun that half of it is obscured, all lip and hair. Kay spots a flower tucked behind her ear, a conch that she’s holding up to the camera.

The posts seem pretty standard. There’s a picture of her on the steps of what is obviously a frat house, one shoulder of her dress slipping down her arm. She’s hanging off another girl, their hips touching in that classic sorority x. The photo’s geotagged Bowdoin College, which, after some scrolling, Kay discovers is a tiny liberal arts school not all that far from Pelican Town. _Visiting my #1_ the caption says. Kay swipes back and keeps scrolling There are more than a few pictures of Haley’s freshly manicured nails, a couple unremarkable outfit of the day posts. A little further back there’s a few posts of her with some guy. On the hood of his car, tucked under his shoulder in a booth. He’s thick-necked, with shaggy brown hair and sort of puppy dog eyes. The kind that’ll really fuck you up. In every single photo he’s wearing the same high school letterman’s jacket. He’s not in any of the posts from the last six months though and the absence speaks volumes. Kay frowns. She can’t find any of Haley’s photography. She scrolls up, then back down. Not even a single landscape shot and it’s not like her other posts are that artfully done. Sure, she’s got an eye for composition, that much is clear, but there’s no obvious photographic intent. Nothing that says _here’s my art, look at it._ Kay scrolls up, wondering if maybe she’s linked another Instagram or a website that’s just for her photos. But the only thing in her description is a single sunflower emoji. Kay tugs the screen down and the photos shift to accommodate a new post. It’s a picture of Haley perched on the backseat of a convertible. Her hair’s curled into an oversized crown. A _Homecoming Queen_ sash slung across a tight, glittering dress. _#tbt_. Kay’s not sure she’s ever met someone quite like the person on this Instagram, much less talked to them. A wind kicks up. Chilly like it’s come straight off the ocean. Kay follows her back.

Kay’s waiting on a frozen pizza when her phone dings. She glances over to where she’s set it on the kitchen counter, then pushes off from her spot beside the oven to retrieve it. The text is from her dad which makes her feel both disappointed and vaguely anxious.

_Did you return the rental car? I just got a late notice in my email._

“Shit.” Kay starts in on one of her nails, rocking on the balls of her feet. She’d completely fucking forgotten about the stupid car. She hesitates, thumbs hovering over the screen, then starts in.

_Sorry_

_Where do I return it_

The pizza’s starting to smell a little burnt. Kay crouches down, watches some cheese burn at the bottom of the oven. Her phone vibrates again.

_Town 30 min away. We talked about this before you left Kay Jesus_

She frowns, brushing back her hair.

_how am i supposed to get back then_

The wind rattles the house. That awful creak from the attic stars again.

_Ask someone in town to drive you._

Kay stands, sniffling. She wipes her runny nose on her arm. Whatever she picked up on the plane seems to be low grade sticking around. Her thumbs hover again over her screen. _How about you go fuck yourself, huh? How about that?_ She sniffles again. _This whole thing might be less of a fucking production if you took a couple days off to drive me out here, you know?_ But she just sets her phone down and checks the timer on the oven. Her phone dings again. “Jesus fucking Christ, leave it alone!” But it isn’t a text. It’s an Instagram notification.

 _❀_ _haley_hanson__ _✿_ _liked a photo_

Kay opens it. The photo Haley liked is from a couple of years ago. At one of Kay’s first student shows. Her advisor took it. It’s of Kay standing smiling next to one of her paintings. The caption just a smiley face. Kay chews her bottom lip, looks out toward the window where the rental is parked. She clicks on Haley’s profile, opens a dm.

_hey I know this is random as hell but do you wanna drive with me 2morrow to a town like not far from here_

Her response is almost immediate.

_Lol wut_

Kay chews harder on the inside of her lip.

_we could talk about art on the way or whatever. id pay ur gas_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A long update with hardly a trace of Harvey lol. I’m so sorry haha. If you’ve read my other stuff (and if you have holy shit tysm) you know I take a slow burn real serious ;) 
> 
> I also changed Kay’s hair from last chapter and updated it because…quarantine idk lol 
> 
> Thank you so so much for reading <3\. I really appreciate it.


	5. Chapter 5

Kay used to watch the Gilmore Girls. With her mom. Every day almost. Usually when she would get home from school. Elementary school, if she remembers right. The memory is tactile and she feels small inside of it. Too short and too skinny for her age. She used to curl up into a ball at the end of the couch, pressing her thighs close to her chest, trying to be as small as the decorative pillow beside her, the show’s theme song playing softly in the background as her mom popped popcorn on the stove.

She shot up like a weed in middle school. Around the same time her mom started to fray at the edges, actually. A parting of the ways. It feels hazy now. The memory of it. Far away. But if she tries, she can still remember the waning sunlight filtering through their living room windows, the film from goldfish crackers on her fingertips. ABC family ran reruns every day at four pm. Two episodes, sometimes out of order, but it didn’t really seem to matter. The plot was, if she remembers it right, sort of fluid. More of a feeling. Comforting really. Low light, all cozied up. Just the two of them before her dad got home from work. _Your grandpa lives in a town like this,_ her mom would say every so often from her spot beside Kay on the couch, _we’ll have to go sometime._ And the scene in front of her now _does_ look a little like that, as far as she remembers. A ring of cobblestone at the end of Mainstreet, on the other side of town from the docks. Just beyond that, grass greener than anything that could even hope to stay alive in California. A gazebo at the center, its white shingled roof gleaming in the sun. A little further down, encircled by billowy maples, Kay can see a bronze statue of a man, too far away for her to make out who he’s supposed to be. At his feet, a few late summer dahlias bob in the breeze. 

Kay leans back in her seat, pulling her legs up criss cross, palms resting on her knees. Her windows are cracked and just the slightest breeze slips though. Kay lets her eyes flutter closed, lets the sun warm her face through the windshield. She’s ten minutes early. And tired. Hadn’t slept well the night before at all, not with the way the old house had been creaking.

A squeal cuts through the quiet and Kay opens her eyes just as a little boy goes flying past her car. He’s got gingery hair that catches that light as he runs, arms outstretched like the wings of a plane, up the little bluff toward the gazebo. A woman, his mother Kay guesses if the matching red hair is any indication, is in hot pursuit. She’s wearing the kind of flow-y, bohemian adjacent skirt she’d seen in the Dress Barn and it’s catching under her boots, giving the kid just enough time to bound over the gazebo’s little wall, darting toward the statue. The woman huffs, tossing her braid over one shoulder, as she heads up after him.

Kay watches them disappear toward the other side of the square where a long line of shops dip off beyond the horizon. In the far corner she spots the unmistakable sidewalk sign of a coffee shop and makes a mental note to check it out. She leans back against the driver’s seat, resting her head on her closed fist. It’s a nice day. Just objectively. And the town square is pretty in a sort of quaint way. It’s easy, as the breeze rustles the leaves on the trees, to imagine it in the fall. Pumpkins stacked one atop the other, scarecrows swaying in the breeze. Kay wonders if that’s something people actually do or just something she’s seen on tv. She picks up her phone, opens Instagram, then shuts the app almost violently before she can start scrolling. It’s practically a reflex these days. Kay frowns, tucking the phone into the pocket of her hoodie. This one, at least, is her own, even if she’s still wearing it with those holey leggings. Kay shivers and glances up just in time to find the little red-haired boy standing right at the end of her car. It’s brief, just long enough for him to peer through the windshield then take off again, this time heading toward Mainstreet, his mother, yelling now, following him down the sidewalk. Kay ruffles her hair with her fingers. The light dims some, some clouds coming in off the ocean. One of the girls in her cohort sophomore year used to paint landscapes. Intricate little works stretched out on huge canvases; towns dwarfed by the scale of her empty land. They talked some nights, while they waited for layers to dry or gesso to set, about beautiful things and spooky things and the wide swath of crossover between the two. Kay looks again out at the town square. A wind comes rustling through the low branches, dahlias swatting against the gazebo’s brick base. There is something distinctly spooky about the town square that nowhere in California can quite manage. She thinks about long, dark strings of kelp on cold Bay beaches, flickering neon above long abandoned pink stucco motels. All the eerie strangeness of California. No, it’s not quite the same. This is more innate. Quieter. Like a scary movie that, before the end, you might just want to crawl inside of. Funny, she thinks, fingers twitching again toward the phone in her pocket, aren’t all of Stephen King’s book set in Maine?

The bang on her window sends her nearly shooting up out of her seat. Kay yelps, scrambling for her phone or her keys or _something_. But it’s only Haley, bent a little at the waist, shielding her eyes from the sun as she peers into the car. “Jesus Christ!” Kay says as she rolls the window down a little more. Haley takes a step or two back. More in the sun, she becomes a reflective surface. Her mirrored sunglasses and heavy bracelets glint in the light. Her jeans are neatly distressed, tailored so they skim over her hips, cinch up around her waist. She’s tucked an airy yellow blouse into them and when she takes another step back Kay can see that the soles of her sneakers are two inches high. Real Palo Alto shit. Kay wonders if she’s ever been. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“Yeah,” Haley says, rapping her knuckles on the window frame, “small town death squads. Now are we doing this weirdo errand or like what?”

Kay untucks her legs and starts the car. Haley’s own is parked just a little ways down, if the ways she nods at it is any indication. It’s shittier than Kay expects, just a sort of beat up sedan, but the license plate holder is so bedazzled it’s hard to read her number. “Yeah, yeah, cool.” She swallows. “Thanks for doing this.” 

Haley takes a few steps toward Kay’s car, drags her gaze down her body. “Outfit,” she says, “not as good as yesterday.”

“This is three days late.” There’s a storm brewing outside. Maybe. Clouds moving at a pace that makes Kay feel like she’s watching a time-lapse. And that’s what she’s looking at – clouds refracting through the buildings glass front and onto the countertop, churning over the fraying tape holding the Hertz slogan onto the linoleum – instead of the man scolding her. So he says it again, this time with more of an attitude.

Kay breaks from watching the clouds and slides the keys across the counter. She puts on her biggest, brightest smile. “I know, I’m so sorry about that. I have no idea how it happened.”

He rolls his eyes, the crepey skin beside them crinkling at the movement. His veins are so close to the surface they pool blue at the tops of his cheeks, the fast moving clouds reflect in the circles of his glasses. “There were very clear instructions both on the website and in your rental agreement. I suppose it’s too much to expect you to _read_ either of those.”

“Jesus Christ.” Up until that moment, Haley had been sitting bored on one of the chairs by the front door, but now she comes up beside Kay. She’s wearing a sugary perfume. It wafts up with her. “Chill the fuck out.” She flicks the keys, so they clatter closer to him. “It’s, like, just a car.” Kay glances over at her, eyebrow raised. They both smirk, like a mirror.

Haley seems a little flustered as they head back into the parking lot. Her hair flying as she sashays across the pockmarked asphalt toward the car. Kay watches her clench and unclench her fists. “What an asshole,” she says over her shoulder. Kay nods, her hand skimming through the top of her purse. She wishes she had a cigarette. Always sort of wishes that. Started and quit smoking, Jesus, probably a hundred times since high school. Desperate for the immediate aesthetic boost of a cigarette between her teeth, desperate to have something to do with her fingers. Her lungs feel a little brittle just thinking about it. “I hate douchebags.” The sun has poked out from behind the clouds, moving slower now. It warms the air. “I’m starving,” she says as she digs through her purse for her keys, “you wanna eat something?”

Haley orders a plate of fries and when it arrives, she pushes it in the middle of the table for them to share. It probably doesn’t mean much, like friendship wise, but Kay laps it up anyway. She pulls her legs onto the booth to cross them, straightens up, attentive now. Gus brings a new bottle of ketchup to the table. He claps Kay a little too hard on the back. He calls Haley ‘miss Haley’ and Kay watches her turn a particularly vivid shade of red. “Come here often?” She asks when Gus disappears back behind the counter.

“Nowhere else to come.” Haley tips the bottle over onto the fries. “Hope you like ketchup.”

“Really?”

Haley glances up. “Really what?”

Kay plops a fry into her mouth. “Really no other places to eat?”

She shrugs. “There’s a pizza place a few streets over.” She eats a couple fries, mouthing some ketchup from the side of her thumb. “A seafood shack down by the harbor, but that’s closed now for the season. You’ve got your like, I don’t know, standard chain shit out by the mall a couple towns over.”

“Huh.” Kay looks over Haley’s shoulder. The back booth where she’d seen the man two nights ago is empty. She doesn’t really know why she’s looking at all, her chest tightening when she remembers the attack. Sheturns her attention back to the plate of fries in front of her. Their water glasses are sweating, the only hint now that the clouds have moved back in that it’s still summer at all. “Thanks for doing this. For real.” Haley just shrugs. Kay leans a little back, cocking her head to get a better look at the heavy pie case. She spots a key lime on the bottom shelf, just above it a tall cake with strawberry halves pressed into the white frosting at its sides. Kay turns back to the table, takes a long sip of water. It might be nice to order some coffee, something warm to perk her up, but Gus has disappeared. “Why did you say yes, anyway?”

Haley bristles. “Does it matter?”

Kay shrugs. “Just trying to make conversation.”

Haley plops a fry into her mouth and leans back in her seat. “Well you’re not very good at it.” At that, Kay honest to god laughs. And then Haley does too. A light sound. She brushes her hair behind her ears and fights a grin. “You know we literally get no new people in this shithole town. And like, we _never_ get people from cool places like California.”

“California’s not that cool.”

Haley lets a fry she had between her fingers drop back onto the plate. “Ha. Yeah, sure.”

“It’s really not.”

Haley nods, glancing out toward the street. She fusses with her hair, then works her jaw like she’s thinking hard about something. “You know,” she says, turning back to look at Kay, “you said we were gonna talk about art on the way back.”

Kay blinks at her. “What?”

Haley clears her throat. “It’s a joke. I’m joking.” The silence hangs between them. “You, um, in your DM…”

“Oh. Oh! Yeah. Sorry I…I’m all over the place. Just like in general.” One side of Haley’s mouth ticks up. “I’m always down to talk about art.” Kay flinches, acutely aware of how fucking lame she suddenly sounds.

Haley doesn’t seem to notice, shrugs again. “I doubt I’d have much to add.” That catches Kay off guard, the sudden flash of insecurity that roils between them so surprising that Kay can’t think of anything to say, just lets her mouth hang a little open, searching for words. Haley puts an end to it. “Let’s get out of here,” she says, nodding toward the window even they’re only halfway through the fries. “I have work in a couple hours.”

“Shouldn’t we…pay?”

Haley waves her off. “Gus knows where the send the tab. And you paid for gas.”

She’s not really listening. Instead, she’s pouring all her attention into breaking up the thick clump of ramen noodles she’s just drenched in boiling water with her fork, her phone pressed between her cheek and shoulder. Kay undoes the plastic around a kraft single with her teeth and sets it on top of the noodles, watches as it warps into the water. It’s gross shit. Real bottom of the barrel food, but the cheese cuts the spice from the noodles and it makes her feel nostalgic and warm and it’s not like she knows how to cook anything anyway. Not anything she’d want to eat, at least. Kay rests her elbows on the kitchen counter and watches the cheese melt off her fork.

Her dad called her about ten minutes ago. Started in on a monologue about the house without even saying hello. Kay’s tuned in enough to _mmhmm_ at the right times, and _oh_ when it seems appropriate, but when he mentions something about the old piping in the house, she perks up. “I know about that actually,” she cuts in, “there was this show on public access that I watched today that was about how to winterize-“

“It’s not polite to interrupt, Kay.”

Kay sniffles but says nothing. Her sinuses have started to ache. She switches the phone to her other ear and starts to pick at her ramen. “Have you ever been in a Nor’easter?”

He ignores her. “We need to talk seriously about selling.” Kay frowns, holding her hand out in front of her, checking her nails. A wind kicks up outside and the house groans like it can hear the conversation. “Obviously, the house if yours to do with what you see fit, but I can’t imagine what a 23-year-old would want with a defunct winery.”

Kay drums her nails on the counter, glancing over at the darkening sky out the kitchen window. “Yeah.”

“I don’t foresee it being too difficult. Especially if we start next summer. It’s not a functioning winery, but the house and land are still in good condition according to the appraisals. And any skilled realtor could sell Pelican Town as a premium destination. Not as busy as Bar Harbor but with all the same charm.”

Kay works some polish off her thumb with her pointer. “Sure.”

“We can put the money from the sale in a trust for you.”

“Okay.”

“Kay?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you return the rental?”

Kay swallows, curling the fingers on her freehand into a loose fist. She’d spent the better part of the rest of her afternoon on Haley’s Instagram. Looking for some clue, any clue, that she’d hated their day together. Or had fun. Finding nothing that seemed to point to either, she’d fallen into a rabbit hole. Scrolling through dozens of Pelican Town profiles until her brain felt swamped with information. Glimpses of a life that seemed somehow both totally foreign and exactly the same. It has been disorienting and she’s still trying to shake off that familiar pang of loneliness. “Yep.”

“Alright, good. We can have a discussion about you buying a car next week. For now, the groundskeeper your grandfather used to have on said there should be a bike in the back shed that you are welcome to use.”

“’kay”

Silence hangs on the line. Kay knows that these are the moments her dad dreads. When all of the things he’d had to say have run out, when he needs to improv. “Alright then,” he settles on, “well, have a nice weekend. Call if you need anything.”

“Sure.”

The bike’s all in one piece. Which is better than she can say about the shed where she found it. The whole structure creaks when Kay pulls one wheel from where it’s been buried under boxes. Waning light slips between the gaps in the boards, scattering across things so coated in dust her lungs start to riot. Her inhaler is sitting in her purse on the kitchen table. A rookie mistake. But Kay takes a deep, long breath, heads out into the evening and takes another. It’s just nerves. The post-attack jitters that follow her for a few days after. She sets the bike gingerly in the patchy grass. It’s an old Schwinn, probably twice her age, but looks okay all things considered. A road bike by the looks of it, its handles set way forward like whoever rode it last really wanted to race. The frame a burnt pumpkin color. Her phone buzzes in the pocket of her hoodie and Kay freezes. Shit, the last thing she needs right now is something from either of her parents or, god, a _how r u_ from any of her friends. But it’s only Haley and there’s something insular about it, something that feels kind of nice.

_come outtt_

The sun is setting faster now, spilling down onto the horizon, and a chill kicks up in the air.

_???_

Haley’s response is immediate.

_party obvi_

_11_

_dont be weird and come early_

Kay rocks on the balls of her feet, chewing at her lower lip. A party would be cool. Really cool, actually. Something chill. Something to finally _do._ And more importantly: proof that she hadn’t totally embarrassed herself today. 

_where_

Kay toes the spokes of the bike with her sneaker. If it’s just in town, then this thing could probably make it.

_1130 s hazel street_

_apartment up top_

_but like_

_ull see the party_

Kay tucks her phone back into the front pocket of her hoody. Sure. Okay. Why the fuck not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading <3 <3\. I hope all of you are hanging in. 
> 
> Oh and next chapter we'll finally get to hear Harvey talk lol ;)


	6. Chapter 6

Haley’s right. The party’s hard to miss. It’s only 11:45. Early really, Kay thinks, after years of showing up hours late to house parties. But the place is packed. And loud. She can feel the bass through the sidewalk when she swings off her bike. A breeze rolls down the street, rustling leaves that sound too dry for late August. There’s a chill on it. More autumn than summer. Kay regrets the slip of a dress she’s in, regrets even more her canvas shoes as she barely sidesteps a puddle. She bends down to lower her bike onto the grass and looks up again at the house. It’s one in a long row just about a mile off of Mainstreet. She’d woven down narrow, maple-lined streets to get to it, each block looking more and more dead, and less and less like anywhere she’d ever been in her life. The houses on the first street off Maine were all squat little coastals, awnings like frosting on gingerbread, tall, sloped roofs.

These are nothing like that. As far as she knows there isn’t a college in this town, but the row of houses where she’s standing now has that unmistakably rundown, low-effort, turned over vibe a lot of the places she used to party have. Rickety houses with twice as many people as rooms; frayed porches sagging under the weight of moth balled couches. The second story balcony on this house looks _particularly_ precarious with the weight of about a dozen people on it. One of the guys on the balcony hinges his body over the splintering railing to toss a can of beer down to a group on the house’s uneven front steps. One of them catches it, whoops, then tosses his still lit cigarette out onto the lawn. It arcs through the darkness, going out with a wet hiss in the grass.

Kay runs her fingers along her dress. It’s tight. Silky. Peachy. The kind of look she’d wear on a night out where the end goal is to get fucked. Which…Kay worries the hem with her nails…isn’t _not_ the goal. Even if the idea of _actually_ getting fucked makes her feel…weird. It’s been months since the last time someone touched her. Some fumbling in a dark dorm the night before graduation with a guy she’d seen probably a hundred times in the library but never spoke to. _I’ve been wanting to fuck you forever,_ he’d told her as he struggled to pull her shirt over her head.

It had, in a word, fucking sucked. He’d been too drunk to get it up, nearly passed out with his fingers stuffed inside of her. She’d masturbated in his shower when it was over, left just before dawn to get dressed in her cap and gown. _That’s so depressing,_ her roommate said the last month they’d lived in the apartment together when Kay admitted, after a few beers, that she was the only person who’d ever made herself cum, _what’s even the point then, you know?_

So, yeah, she’s…motivated to find someone to do one better. Or at least convince herself that maybe there _is_ someone who can at least try and do one better. But a quick scan of the boys on the balcony and the front steps makes her think that tonight is probably not going to be that night.

A guy on the bottom step notices her. He elbows a guy next to him, canting his jaw toward her. A quick bolt of panic surges through Kay. It’s the first time she’s shown up to a party knowing ostensibly no one since, shit, probably high school. Old, new territory. It makes her feel like a whole loser and the feeling is so sharply unpleasant she takes two steps back onto the sidewalk. She could turn around right now, get back on her grandpa’s shitty, rickety bike and get out of here. Maybe that diner is still open. Probably, right? Maybe that guy will be there again Maybe someone else. It sounds kind of nice. Quiet company, a plate of fries, the quiet whir of the pie case as it spins. “Kay!” Haley comes bursting through the group on the front porch. She’s curled her hair and it bounces around her shoulders as she comes down the steps. Her chiffon skirt is just a few shades pinker than her own skin. It flutters as she moves down the overgrown path, thin fabric brushing against her thighs. The ruffles of her blouse shiver in the breeze. “Oh my god! You came!”

Whatever social ecosystem exists in this nowhere town, Haley is, without a doubt, the center of its universe. The prettiest girl, showing the most skin. Dressed the best by about a mile. She seems to know everyone and want to talk to no one, so after Haley hands Kay a beer, and quickly downs her own, they just weave through the house. It’s too loud to talk – music playing from god knows where and the din of the increasingly tight crowd makes even the idea of trying to start a conversation moot – but every so often Haley will glance behind her, back at Kay, like she’s making sure Kay is still with her. And there’s something nice about it that Kay can’t quite name. And the feeling just keeps getting nicer with every beer she has. Kay’s lost track of it now, stomach rumbling from the beer’s bubbles, her vision soft. It makes her feel like a fish. Riding the current, bumping into people and walls and the sharp corners of tables. It makes her sloppy too. One minute she’s drifting through the house’s cramped hallway, following Haley’s golden hair like a lure, and the next she’s perched on the arm of a couch, a bottle of beer in her hand this time, the glass cool on her palm. She blinks herself a little less hazy and finds that Haley isn’t with her anymore. She scans the room but doesn’t find her anywhere. She’s fucked up enough now to hold her own but when a gap-toothed guy in a band shirt leans over to whisper _you look really fucked up_ in her ear, she slips off, heading for where she assumes the kitchen is. An old trick.

“So LA, huh?” Kay didn’t catch his name, can’t remember if he even offered it. He passes her a lit joint, then adjusts his ballcap. Camo, a fishing lure secured on the curved bill. Kay doesn’t know if he’s cool or not. Could go either way. Back home, she’d clock him immediately as a loser, some kind of weird hick, but he’s the one with the weed at this party and that’s got to mean something right? It honestly seems like the whole town’s here; a cross section of twenty somethings Kay would _never_ see all together in one place back home. Or anywhere back home, Kay thinks, watching the guy adjust the thick belt around his hips.

“Yep,” she says, taking a couple puffs of the joint. Her fingers find her purse, brush against her inhaler. This is dumb as hell, downright fucking dangerous this soon after an attack. But the beer has softened all that. She takes another puff then passes it back.

The guy sets the joint on the lip of an ashtray and lets it burn. It’s sitting precariously on a wobbly stack of PBR cases, the only usable table in the room. The card table Kay assumes is where whoever lives here eats is so heavy with junk it’s bowed in the middle. Behind it, a plastic storage bin, a stack of red solo cups leaning beside it. Kay can see the shallow remains of some kind of punch at the bottom. It smells congealed, the dishes piled high in the sink behind her rounding out the scent of rot. “Well, that’s pretty neat.” He winks. “Maybe you could tell me about it sometime.”

“Fuck off, dude. She doesn’t want to talk to you.” The purple hair is unmistakable. So’s the scowl. Abigail, Kay remembers. The girl from the store.

“Don’t be a bitch.” She sneers at him, then knocks her foot at the base of the PBR tower, menacing the joint. He practically cradles the ashtray. “Jesus, alright, whatever.” He glances back at Kay then heads away toward the hall. She and Abigail waver, left alone now, the moment fading. Her hair is pin straight, scattered around her shoulders, a few split ends curling toward her throat. The dress she’s wearing goes from black to deep purple when she moves into different light, the fabric a lush velvet. Over that, a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off, frayed, the bottom shorn too, reaching just to the curve of her waist. It’s a kind of crust punk adjacent look, approaching but not quite there.

Kay tries to say _long time no see_ or _general store, right?_ or something less colossally lame, but the weed is hitting her hard and fast and her mouth feels glued shut, so instead Kay just smirks at her, raising a single eyebrow. Abigail smirks back, settling in across the narrow kitchen from her. “Filthy,” she says, kicking at a squat pile of empty beer cans, “this place is always so fucking filthy.”

Kay snorts, leaning her hands back on the counter behind her. She jolts. It isn’t pain, exactly, just a sort of weird, dull twinge. Kay’s padded by booze and weed and it’s only when she looks over and sees Abigail staring wide eyed at her, that she pulls her hand from the counter and splays it out in front of her. Kay squints, trying to understand the watery way her hand looks. “Glass,” Abigail says, just as it clicks in Kay’s mind, “oh shit, there’s fucking glass in your hand.” Kay hisses, fights the urge to curl her fingers against her palm. It’s a piece of glass the length of her knuckle stuck right in the center of her palm. Jagged. A piece of the torn label still stuck to it.

Kay blinks. The pain is radiating up her wrist, but she’s that kind of lush, heavy drunk that keeps everything at a distance. The beer’s sloshing in her stomach and she can tell that she’s reached the point of no return, she’s way more fucked up than she wants to be. Fuzzy and woozy, Kay reaches up to trace the fingers of her other hand along the edge of the glass. It stings and then, on impulse, she yanks it from her palm. She immediately regrets it, clutching her hand to her stomach, hissing as she bends over. The pain radiates outward, almost to her toes, and her breath catches frighteningly in her throat. “Oh fuck,” she says between clenched teeth, “that was so fucking stupid.” Her blood is warm and spilling quickly through her fingers, dripping onto the cracked linoleum.

“Holy shit.” Abigail stumbles over, nearly bumping into her. She smells like wet cigarette smoke, shitty bottom shelf liquor. “Did you get all the glass out?” She asks when Kay straightens back up. Blood trickles down her wrist. Kay frowns at it, frowns at Abigail, then she bends over and heaves. Her puke tastes like bad beer and bile and the murky salt of the ramen she ate for dinner and the taste of it makes her heave harder. “Holy shit,” she hears Abigail say above her, “holy fucking shit.” 

Haley’s hand is so tight around Kay’s wrist that it’s starting to hurt. She is practically dragging her across the lawn, the sounds of the party fading as they move. Kay’s limp like a doll, but when she spots Haley’s beat up old car at the end of the sidewalk, she digs her heels in. “You’re way too drunk to drive.” Abigail wrapped Kay’s hand in a grimy dishtowel she scrounged from around the sink. Kay’s bled through it, her hand sticky and heavy at her side.

Haley glances back at her only when they’ve reached her car. “It’s fine.” Kay wavers. “I know what I’m doing. Now get in the car or you’re going to literally fucking bleed to death on the sidewalk.”

“Maybe we should just call an ambulance.”

“You wanna be here for two hours?”

“What?”

“ _Get_ in the car.” Kay glances back at the house in the distance. A few people have come out onto the lawn, watching them. “Dude!” Kay slides in, holding her hand against her chest. Haley turns the key, then looks hard at Kay. “If you puke in my car, I am never speaking to you again.”

The lamppost Kay’s leaning against is wet to the touch. It hasn’t rained but everything looks slick, like the town has just risen up from the waves. She spots the crushed pieces of a shell in the gutter on the street and Kay glances back toward the docks. The ocean feels closer now. In the quiet of the empty street, she can hear it lapping softly against the shore. Another breeze kicks up, this one chillier, saltier, than the autumn wind over by the houses. A soft sound draws Kay’s gaze upward. Hanging from the lamppost, a prim, arrow-shaped piece of cloth, _Pelican Towne_ embroidered in honey-colored thread at the center, a bunch of blueberries just beneath. Kay stares at it for a beat, then turns to look back at Haley. She’s been pounding at this door for who knows how long. The pain has settled into a dull throb, but Kay’s stomach’s roiling now, the weed high washing heavy over her. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to wake Harvey up.”

“Harvey?”

“The only doctor in this shithole town.” Her voice pitches up, “Jesus Christ, open the fucking door!” The door opens so quietly, Haley nearly plows him in the face. She stumbles drunkenly backward. “There you are!”

Kay watches as the man from the diner steps onto the clinic’s single step. He’s taller than she remembers, dressed in t-shirt and a pair of cloth shorts, that chestnut hair a mess of loose curls. He takes his glasses off, kneading one eye with the heel of his hand before replacing them. “Haley, do you have any idea what time it is?”

“My friend’s hurt!”

His eyes widen at that, blinking behind his glasses. Haley backtracks, pulling Kay roughly toward the clinic. Harvey catches sight of her hand and straightens up immediately, adjusting his glasses. “Well then,” he steps aside, leaving room for them to slip past him,.

The exam room smells like an exam room – disinfectant, plastic – but there’s a vining plant on the table beside the computer, a window that looks out to a narrow, fenced backyard, warm light from a second-floor window spilling onto the grass. The light overhead is bright but not fluorescent. And Kay soaks it in. The normal tight-lunged panic she feels in a doctor’s office is nowhere to be found. Probably because she’s so astronomically fucked up. Her palm throbs. He’d given her a clean towel, told her in a calm, measured voice to apply pressure, then left the both of them alone in the room. Haley won’t stop pacing.

When Harvey returns, he’s in a pair of slacks and a sweater, balancing a cup of coffee in one hand, a clean towel in the other. He sets his coffee down near the computer, then walks over to gingerly unwrap Kay’s hand, folding the clean towel again around it. “Keep applying pressure,” he says softly.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something?” Haley bristles, stopping her pacing.

“She’s applying pressure, Haley.” Harvey takes a long sip of coffee, then pushes his glasses a little higher on his nose. “She’ll be fine.” Haley huffs. “You’re going to need a few stiches,” he says, now to Kay, “and I think we’d both prefer me to be a little more awake for that.”

Haley scowls. “Stitches? Ew. Count me out.” She shifts from one foot to the other. “Does the vending machine out front still work?”

“Last I checked,” Harvey says bending down to open a drawer. Haley glances over at Kay, then spins on the balls of her feet, disappearing into the hallway.

“Just relax,” he says, his thumb putting just the barest pressure at the base of her palm, “I’m here to help.” He has a soft, reassuring smile that ruffles his mustache when it widens. Good bedside manner. The thought floats up from nowhere. Kay sways. Harvey glances up, reaching out to touch her arm, steadying her. “Feeling woozy?”

“I guess.”

He nods, that smile returning. “I’m sure.” Kay looks away. At first, she was too cocooned to feel much of anything at all, but the bright lights are sobering her up and she can’t bring herself to keep watching the needle thread through her skin. “How much did you have to drink?”

“A lot.” Kay sniffles. The pressure in her sinuses tightens. “And I smoked some weed too.”

She braces for a scolding, but he just clicks his tongue against his teeth. “That would do it.”

Kay glances back at him. His attention is poured into her hand, brow furrowed. It gives her a chance to really look at him. He’s handsome, which she sort of thought when she first saw him at the diner, but now, up close, her brain elaborates. Good features, which sounds like the kind of weird thing her mom might say. But it’s true. High cheekbones, a strong jaw. _Touch starved._ Made all the more acute by the fact that he _is_ touching her. And his hands are warm, even through his surgical gloves. The sight of the needle starts to skeeve her out again and she looks back up at his face. His glasses are a little old fashioned. The kind that has a dark rim at the top, just glass at the bottom. But he doesn’t really look that old. Forty at the very oldest, but probably a few years younger than that. He glances up, like he can feel her staring. “Everything feeling okay?”

Kay nods. The stitching feels like a muted push through her skin, just the barest sting as it threads through. “I think I saw you before,” she says, her mouth softened by beer.

Harvey glances up for just a moment before returning his attention back to her palm. “Oh?”

“At the diner.” Exhaustion is starting to settle in her, that soupy kind of drunk that makes her want to curl up and sleep for a whole day. “A few days ago probably.”

“Probably so. I like the diner.” He smiles at her. “Good coffee.”

Kay looks at him, still wobbly, then down at her hand. “This doesn’t hurt. Should it hurt?”

“Well, I’ve numbed it a little.” He chuckles. “And you’ve numbed it a little.” Kay’s cheeks heat; she looks away, over at the fern on his desk. “Well,” he says, clapping his hands on his thighs and scooting the chair back away from her, “that’s that.” Kay looks down at the Frankenstein cut clean through her palm. Her hand feels like a separate part of her. She wiggles her fingers. “We’ll just get that bandaged up and get you on your way.”

She blinks up at him, her father’s voice suddenly loud in her ear. “I don’t know if my insurance works here.” She blinks again. “I’ve got to be out network here.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He stands, brushing his hands over his slacks as he does. “First one’s free.”

Haley’s still pacing when Kay finds her in the waiting room. “You waited for me.” She says, a little dumbstruck.

Haley rolls her eyes, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Of course, I waited for you. Jesus Christ.” She flips her hair back over her shoulder. “That party sucked anyway.”

“Neither of you ladies are driving.” Harvey comes through the door to the waiting room, shrugging a windbreaker over his shoulders.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Harvey levels his car keys at her. “You’re lucky I’m not calling the sheriff, Haley. What you did was incredibly dangerous. I would have much preferred you calling me.” He zips his jacket up. “I would have come out.”

Kay glances out the clinic’s front bay window. It’s too dark to see that state of the sky, but she can see that the trees are bending in the wind, wonders if the storm that’s going to roll through will be anything like her first night. “I think we should just ride with him, dude.”

Haley scoffs. “Oh, not you too.”

Haley lives close to town, just a few minutes’ drive from the clinic. “Text me when you get home,” she says to Kay before slamming the door shut.

The ride after that is quiet. Harvey has the radio on. News, weather. A storm is rolling in off the coast, but the voice on the radio doesn’t think it’ll hit Sagadahoc county. Just some wind, a little rain. Kay flexes the fingers on her good hand over her thigh. Her dress feels especially thin. She’s starting to shiver. Harvey glances over, then reaches for a dial near the radio. The heat comes a little stale out of the vents. “You live way out of town, don’t you?”

“Do I?”

Harvey shakes his head, not a yes, not really a no. The road is narrow, snaking along, and Harvey drives slow and careful. Kay wonders if he’s from around here. His accent is pretty nondescript, but so is Haley’s and if Kay’s Instagram snooping taught her anything, it’s that Haley’s never left this town for longer than a few weeks. When the road curves toward the ocean, the wind changes, picks up. The moon breaks from the clouds, spilling out over the dark water. The radio blinks a green 2:30 and Kay feels even more tired than she had on his examination table. She starts to drift, the chatter on the radio and the weed lulling her softly off.

She starts awake when he comes to a stop. “I think we’re here,” he says, putting the car into park. Harvey peers up through the dash. “I had no idea this place was so big.” He turns to look at her. “Must be a lot for one person.”

“Um, yeah, I guess.” She slips her purse over one shoulder. “It was my grandpa’s. I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Pretty much everybody seems to.”

“I only moved here a few years ago.” He chuckles. “So, I’m not up on the lore. But I might have had him as a patient.”

“Probably not. He was in a nursing home for a really long time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Kay blinks at him. “Oh! No, I mean, it’s not…I didn’t like know him very well so it’s not like…you know.”

“Still.” He shifts in his seat. “Ah, before you go,” Harvey pulls his wallet from his back pocket, slips a card from it and hands it to Kay. ‘This has the clinic’s number and my home number. You’ll be better served calling that than 911 if you have a medical emergency.”

She turns it over in her hand. “Seriously?”

“Unfortunately, yes. We’re about an hour away from the nearest hospital.”

Kay’s chest tightens. Her fingers twitch toward her purse. “Oh my god.”

“Not to worry. I can take care of most things. And I can arrange transport if the situation is beyond my skillset. But, um,” he smiles again, almost shyly, “I wouldn’t encourage you to be particularly accident-prone. If you can help it.”

“Oh, um, I’m not usually…” she holds her injured hand instinctively to her chest, “I don’t usually like…you know…”

“Sure.”

“Well, anyway,” she shifts toward the door. “thanks for the ride and um...for everything else too.”

“Of course. The pain should subside in a day or two. You can take some Tylenol for the swelling and come into the clinic in about a week and we can see about getting those stitches out.”

“Yeah, okay. Um, thanks again.” He nods. She shuts the door, careful not to slam it. Kay watches as he pulls down the drive, watches him linger just at the base of it. She raises her hand to wave. He honks, then pulls out onto the highway. Kay’s phone buzzes in her purse. There’s a wet, electric smell in the air. Like it might start to rain. Kay digs for her phone, pulls up the text. It’s from Haley.

_u ok?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	7. Chapter 7

Kay wakes up with a hangover and a head cold. Head pounding, mouth so dry the inside of it feels like it’s stuck all together. Light blades through the window’s closed blinds, morning at the very least, skittering across the thin quilt she’s pulled up over her head. She throws it off her, feeling suddenly overheated and tries to sit up. Her stomach sloshes, that muddy, carsick feeling in her guts swims up to her head and she’s back down, groaning, fingers splayed over her eyes.

She’s got only the vaguest memory of coming home the night before. Remembers fumbling with the lock, feeling her way up the stairs. She’d stumbled on the top one, landed on the hardwood, her right knee still throbbing, the skin stingy like it’s scratched. At least she managed to change out of her clothes, even if she can feel the t-shirt’s tag against her collarbone. Her stomach twinges when she rolls over, her hand aches. Her hand aches. Oh. _Yeah._ Kay opens one eye, then the other. The room has a sort of grey quality, backlit by the clouds, the woven rug beside the bed muted now. But still hard to look at, Kay’s temples pounding. She rolls toward the window, head down into the pillow. Holy fucking shit last night must have been a scene. A trail of blood from the kitchen to the front door, Haley shouting on the sidewalk. And, _oh yeah,_ she fucking puked. Probably right on that girl Abigail’s shoes. Kay runs her hand down the plane of her stomach. What the fuck is with that? Second time in like a week. Like she’s some kind of kid again, just throwing up whenever she gets stressed out. So her body’s going haywire and all the friends she might have made at that party are probably never going to look her in the eye again. Great. Good. Very nice.

Her phone rattles on the table and Kay scrambles for it even as her stomach and head lurch as she moves. She knows she’s going to feel some kind of way no matter who’s texting and no matter what they’re going to say and she just wants to get it the fuck over with. Kay settles when she sees it’s Haley. There’s something smaller scale about the text being from her, protected like the town is a little bubble. Like nothing here will ever mater outside of it. And a relief too that even after nearly ralphing in her car, Haley still wants to talk.

_brought ur bike back_

_ur gpa’s house is like so creepy_

_left it on the front porch_

Kay sits up onto her elbows, squints at the text, reads it again. Her chest flutters a little. Kay isn’t sure exactly where Haley lives but she knows it’s not close to the winery because _nothing_ is close to the winery.

_wow omg ty_

_you like totally didn’t have to do that_

Dots appear. Haley’s typing. Then nothing. Nothing for what feels like an excruciating amount of time before her phone again buzzes.

_way embarrassing last night dude_

_figured u didn’t want 2 b seen back there_

A joke, maybe. Either a real show of intimacy or a complete dismissal and Kay’s head is pounding too hard for her to try and figure it out. She types out _lol_ then deletes it, tries to clear out the phlegm in her throat, then pulls her pillow back over her head. It’s ten am. Earlier than she expected it to be. Her whole body aches.

The shower’s kind of her go to. Water scalding hot, steam so thick you can’t see your own hand. Sitting right at the crossroads of medical science and Southern California woo, Kay has, when she thinks about it, probably spent a pretty sizable amount of time sitting on the seats of toilets, inhaling warm steam. But today it just makes her sinuses feel more cramped, just makes her feel overheated. There’s a small smear of blood just above her right knee where she’d stumbled the night before. Her palm throbs. She holds it out in front of her, flexing the fingers. Not even a week on her own and she’s got stitches. So much for taking care of herself. She rolls her wrist, trying to ignore the sting as she moves. The stitches are neat, meticulous and she remembers, as she looks at them, the doctor’s nimble hands. She’d felt warm there in that examination room. Suspended, like time had slowed to a crawl. Cared for. Even though the thought is kind of weird, a little embarrassing.

One of her friends from her senior studio posted a picture on insta that morning. She’s been scrolling through as she went to get herself a glass of water in the empty kitchen. Not a bad shot really, just a little boring. Fingers of fog drifting up a beach. A long caption about solitude and loneliness and trying to tell the difference. Kay recognized the spot right away; knows her friend cropped the Golden Gate Bridge out by millimeters. It’s bullshit. She’s a twenty minute walk from North Beach in that picture, probably picked up something from one of the Italian bakeries right after she posted it. No real solitude, Kay thinks, slipping under the stream of water in the shower, stitched hand hanging in the air through the open shower door, is whatever the hell this is. This frigid summer ocean, these toothy beaches. Real loneliness is whatever keeps making her think about Dr. Greene’s long fingers.

“Rough night?” Pierre’s in a plaid shirt today. Unbuttoned over the same white tee as before. Kay imagines a closet full of them. Her sinuses pulse. The ride up from the winery made her more than a little winded and she’d clutched her inhaler, panting, as she tried to case the store. Terrified that she’d run into Abigail. But it’s empty now, aside from Pierre and a little girl eyeing the self-serve canisters of candy by the front door like a shark. Kay figures she’s still sleeping off her night, makes her wonder, suddenly, what the hell Haley was doing up so early. Pierre drums his fingers. “You in there somewhere?”

Kay blinks up at him. She’s feeling woozy, a little light-headed. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked if you had a rough night.”

Kay sets her basket on the counter. “What gave me away?”

Pierre chuckles, pushing his glasses further up his nose. “You look awful.”

“Yeah well.” Kay starts to unload her basket. Two energy drinks, a box of saltines, one of those plastic cylinders of alka seltzer.

“Interesting regimen.” She eyes him, but he deflects it with another chuckle, reaching over the counter to pick up a little bottle of straw-colored honey. “Take some of this. On the house. Local stuff. Mix it with lemon and some hot water and it’ll fix you right up.”

“So what,” Kay says, weighing the bottle in her hand, “am I gonna be like sacrificed in the harvest festival or something? Is that why people keep giving me free shit?”

That earns her a full-throated laugh. Pierre smooths out the bills of her change and hands them back. “Something like that, yeah.” 

Kay’s struggling to untangle her bike lock from the tire, feeling more and more like her face is going to pound off her skull, when her phone buzzes. She drops the lock, fishing in her bag for her phone, wondering distantly when she got this fucking frantic about her phone.

 _❀_ _haley_hanson__ _✿_ _tagged you in a photo_

It’s a selfie she doesn’t remember taking. The two of them on what looks like a back porch, the heavy bough of a pine at their backs. Haley’s smiling, all teeth, her blond hair caught in some unseen wind, waves spilling over one shoulder. Kay’s smiling too, a little drowsily, their faces close enough to touch. It’s a nice picture, even if the darkness has made it look a little hazy. _Old town, new faces,_ Haley wrote as the caption. Kay likes it, tucks her phone into her back, nestling it beside the honey Pierre gave her.

She makes it to the town square before she can’t go any further. Slows her bike then swings herself off it. It’s not her lungs, thankfully, but her head. Pounding now and her whole body feels flushed. She’s covered in a thin sheen of sweat and when she brings her palm to her forehead, nearly recoils from how hot she is to the touch. It’s an overcast day, downright chilly by Californian standards, but Kay feels sweltering. She wobbles a little, unsteady, light-headed, and then turns to glance back from where she came. The sign for the clinic sways a little in the breeze. 

She doesn’t see Harvey when she heads inside and has nearly talked herself out of the whole thing. How bad would it be to just head back home? Sit in another steam shower, sleep for the rest of the day. But the woman behind the front desk has already made eye contact with her. She waves her over with a kind of enthusiasm that has Kay heading toward her without another thought.

She doesn’t look that much older than Kay, maybe just a couple of years. Dressed in a light sweater and pair of jeans. Maru, if the nameplate in front of her is right. Big, dark eyes behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Dreads that skim her collarbone, speckled with golden beads that shimmer when she nods her head in greeting. “Good afternoon. Here to see the doctor?”

“Oh um,” Kay rests her hands on the desk. She’s not really woozy anymore, but still feels hot, her head still pounding, throat scratchy. “I’m not sure about that.”

“Harvey’s morning is wide open. We can get you in.”

Kay rubs at her neck. She’d forgotten, somewhere between the fantasy of his steady fingers and now, that she fucking hates doctors. Fucking hates doctor’s offices even more. “I was actually just hoping to like pick up some medicine. I don’t really…it’s not that serious.”

“Doesn’t need to be serious.” Kay turns to find Harvey propping open the front door with his hip, a to-go cup of coffee in each hand. He’s rolled the sleeves of his white button-down to his elbows, tie just a little askew. “In fact, I prefer to nip things in the bud before they get anywhere near serious.” He smiles then sets one of the cups down in front of Maru. “Gus was out of whipped cream. You’ll have to do with a little less whimsy in your day.”

Maru laughs. “Wanna tell me how a diner runs out of something like whipped cream?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. You’ll have to take it up with him.” He turns to Kay. “Well, why don’t we see about that not so serious thing, huh?”

In bright daylight of the office’s hallway, and sober now, Kay finds that her assessment still holds. The doctor is handsome. Still kind of in a dad-ish way, sure. But she’s pretty positive he’s not actually old enough to be her dad and there’s something warm and nostalgic about the way he looks. Secure, almost. The whole town’s kind of like that really. Sort of tucked about a decade back from the rest of the country. Her dad would probably call it a pre-9/11 sort of place. Does that sometimes. Uses words or phrases he’s heard on the news and weaponizes them. The implication, of course, a dangerous sort of naivete. A boring stability, a silly sort of quiet. Kay kinda digs it.

“Didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Harvey says over his shoulder.

“Believe me, I do not want to be here again.” Kay winces. “No offense.”

He just chuckles. “None taken.”

Kay fidgets as they head toward the same back exam room where he’d taken her and Haley the night before, suddenly very aware that he’d seen her fucked out of her mind and babbling, bits of glass lodged in her bloody palm. She cannot even imagine what a fucking mess she must have been. “I um…I just wanted to say thanks for last night and um…sorry for anything that um…”

“It’s not a problem.” He stops at the last door and lets her head inside first. “How’s the hand?”

Kay flexes her fingers. “Fine.”

“I realized,” he says, shrugging on his doctor’s coat, “that I didn’t catch your name when you were here last night.”

“Kay. Um Kay Ballinger.”

“Kay.” He turns to the counter, making a couple quick notes on a clipboard. “Nice to properly meet you.”

Kay swallows. She has the sudden urge to try and be charming, interesting, but she’s feeling woozy again and the sort of low-grade panic she gets inside any doctor’s office has settled in. Her fingers curl around the edge of the exam table. “Dr. Greene, right?”

“Harvey. Everyone calls me Harvey.” Kay flushes, flushes harder when she realizes he’s turned to look at her, that he can probably see it.

“You’re warm,” he says, wrist soft on her forehead, waiting for the thermometer to beep. When it does, he takes a step back, “let’s see just how warm.”

Harvey’s voice has a quality Kay can’t quite place. Steady, _safe,_ though just thinking that makes her feel a little delirious. But something about the cadence of it has bled out all of her normal anxiety and when he slides the thermometer into her mouth, holding it steady under her tongue, Kay lets her shoulders relax. “100.3,” he says once it beeps again, “that’s a little higher than I’d like to see. Mild fever.” He nods toward her bandaged hand. “May I?” Surprised, Kay offers it up, unsure if she’s ever been asked permission from a doctor before. Years of cold hands and stern faces. Her jaw turned this way and that, talked through or over. _Breathe quicker, breathe harder_ , _try to_ _empty your lungs._ Harvey gingerly unwinds the bandages, turns her hand a little more toward the light. “Tell me if it hurts.” When she doesn’t answer his eyes flit up, “Doing alright?” She nods a little too vigorously. “Good.” He straightens up and takes a step back. “It would be too early for any kind of infection to be setting in and the wound looks fine.” He heads back to the counter, rummages through a drawer. “I’d like to take a look at your nose and throat if that’s all right.”

He’s gentle. Almost cautiously so. Explaining everything he’s doing, seeing and the rhythm of it lulls her back into that warmth she remembers from the night before. The clouds have cleared and Kay can see into the little backyard she’d noticed earlier. It’s narrower than she imagined it would be. Maybe just five feet of green before it meets a faded white wood fence. She can see a few tomato plants, tall and unruly and beneath them long green vines, what she imagines will eventually become pumpkins tucked beneath their wide leaves. She wonders if they’re his or Maru’s or someone else’s entirely.

“Doesn’t look like strep,” he tells her after a long look in her throat, “but you’re very congested.” He laughs to himself. “I’m sure you didn’t need me to tell you that.”

Kay can’t help but smile. “Yeah, no I figured that one out on my own.”

“Well if you have no other concerns or symptoms then I think it’s fair to say-“

“Wait.” Harvey pauses. “I, um, I have asthma.” She’s not sure what made her say that. Feels weirdly like she's just confessed something. 

He turns to look at her full-on. “Oh, alright.”

“I’ve had it since I was like really little.”

“Are you having symptoms now?”

She shakes her head, then doubles back. “No, um, but I had an asthma attack a few days ago.”

“What do you use to control it?”

“Rescue inhaler.”

“And do you find that works well for you?”

“Yeah.” Kay feels, inexplicably, on the verge of tears. She squirms, embarrassed now. “I just…I just hate getting sick. Because I worry about…I just…I worry that my lungs will…” She trails off but Harvey doesn’t ask her to continue.

His eyes soften as he takes the stethoscope from around his neck. “Well why don’t we have a listen.” He smells a little like antiseptic when he gets close to her. Like coffee and clean linen, just a hint of musky cologne. She gasps a little at the chill of the stethoscope then feels his hand come to rest just underneath, on the outside of her shirt. Familiar, really. She couldn’t even begin to count all the doctors who have done just this exact thing. But sunlight is scattering across the tops of the tomato plants she can see through the window and she can smell deeply brewed dark coffee on his breath and her insides just mellow. “I’m sorry if my hand’s a little cold.” It isn’t. Not even close. “Now take a deep breath for me.”

“Lungs sound alright to me.” He says, hanging the stethoscope back around his neck. “Seems to just be a bit of a head cold, but the fever has me a touch concerned.” He produces a pad of paper from the back pocket of his slacks, clicking his pen on the pad, “I want you to keep an eye on it. If you start getting chills, dizziness, that sort of thing, I want you to come back in. If it’s after hours, just call.” Kay tries to remember where she put his number, doubts she would have had the wherewithal to put it in her phone. “In the meantime, take a couple ibuprofen every few hours. Lots of fluids. A lukewarm shower or bath might help you feel better, but make sure it’s warm enough that you don’t start shivering. And _lots_ of rest.” He looks at her over the rims of his glasses. “Patients your age tend to have trouble with that, but you’ll feel better sooner if you take it easy for a few days.” He tears a paper from the pad and hands it to her. He has chicken scratch handwriting, but Kay can tell by the way each letter is spaced out that he’s tried to make it legible. It’s a neat list of everything he’s just told her, and that feeling, the one she’d felt last night when she was on the same examination table, of being cared for, hits easy. 

He’s fiddling with the vending machine as Kay fills out her paperwork, crouched down, frowning. She notices the sound just as she’s filling out her family medical history, trying to decide if she should check the box for ‘alcoholism’ under ‘mother’ or just leave it well enough alone, and glances over. Maru catches her looking. “Vending machine’s been giving us trouble for a couple days.” She snorts. “Doc thinks he can fix it on his own.”

“Not going so well?” Kay hears a quick metallic thunk and then a heavy sigh. She and Maru share a smile.

He comes back, shaking his head, frown deepening. “Guess we’ll have to bite the bullet and call the repair guy.”

“Shocking.”

Harvey chuckles, scratching at his neck, a faint blush scattering over his cheekbones. “I gave it a shot.”

“Several shots.”

He shakes his head then takes her paperwork from Maru. “Did we get Ms. Ballinger all squared away?”

“Yep.” The phone rings and Maru takes it, turning in her chair so her back’s to the both of them.

Harvey smiles, hands in the pockets of his slacks. “Now I’m not sure if you parked on the street today, but it’ll be tourist season soon and the streets tend to get pretty crowded until at least the first snow. You can use some of the Dress Barn parking behind us if you need to come in on a weekday.”

“Oh,” Kay says, suddenly trying to imagine this town with a tempo anything above a slow crawl. “Thanks, I um, biked today actually but I’ll remember that next time.”

Harvey pauses. “You biked all the way here?”

Kay shifts from one foot to the other. The woozy feeling has returned, her headache intensifying. “Uh, yeah.”

“That’s…you have a fever. You really shouldn’t…” He looks over his shoulder at Maru, off the phone now. “When’s my next appointment?”

“2 pm” He glances down at his wrist at his watch, then back up at Kay. “Why don’t I drive you home?”

She balks. “I don’t wanna impose.”

“You’re not. And you really shouldn’t be exerting yourself when you’re ill. Consider it part of your treatment.”

The clouds she’d seen on the way into town have vanished, the sky a brilliant, clear blue, but there’s an undeniable chill in the air, even with her body giving off heat like a furnace. “Is it normally this cold in August?” She asks as they head a little down the street toward her bike.

“I would say so.” Harvey has his hands in his pockets, face turned a little up like he’s just enjoying the warmth of the sun. “Late August, definitely.” He looks over at her. “I take it you’re not from New England, then?”

“California.”

Harvey chuckles. “Quite a bit of difference there.”

Kay scoffs then nods toward her bike. “That’s me.” Without a word, Harvey hefts it over his shoulder in a surprising show of strength. Under his conservative button-down and slacks, she can see a kind of wiry musculature that implies someone who moves a lot. A runner, maybe. No, a biker, she amends as she watches him pay special attention to her bike’s back tire. He looks up at her and can feel herself flush from her chest to her temples. _Fuck. A crush,_ she thinks, _I’ve got a crush_. _An ill-timed, stupid, naïve little crush._ “Well, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys <3


	8. Chapter 8

The call wakes Kay from a heavy, medicated sleep. She fumbles for it, fingers tapping on the bedside table until she finds her phone, looking blearily up at the screen. She shoots up in bed when she sees who it’s from, sinuses pulsing at the sudden movement. Kay stares at the screen then, with a loud sigh, brings it to her ear. “Mom?” The line hums. “Mom?” She can hear the muted sound of a tv in the background, the muffled shifting of someone moving quietly on a couch. Kay’s head is still pounding, even through the fog of the Sudafed she’d scrounged in the house’s medicine cabinet. She kneads the bridge of her nose, a sort of nauseous vertigo settling inside of her as she listens. Infomercials, she thinks, judging by the steady chirp of the voice. Her mom’s probably rolled onto the phone. An accident. Of course.

Kay can picture it, clear as if she was standing in that old living room herself. The soft early morning light like a glow through the blinds, barely cutting through the swampy darkness in the room. Her mother on the couch, a quiet tangle of limbs. Her long, dark hair spilling over the back of the couch, her silk robe slightly open, revealing the soft crepe of her skin. The TV casting shadows across her bare legs, remote settled in her lap. Almost a still life. Kay can smell her scented candles, the vinegar scent of red wine. “Mom?” The line crackles a little, like something’s rolled over the phone. Kay sniffles, then hangs up. The room feels suddenly like it’s bearing down on her and even though every muscle in her body aches, she pulls herself out of bed. The hardwood’s chilly on her bare feet so she pads over to the rug, rustles through the pile of clothes at the base of her bed until she finds a pair of jeans and slips them over her hips. Kay coughs into her elbow, groans as she massages the hollows of her cheeks. She glances out the bedroom window down the house’s long driveway. The pines stand stately near the road. Some fresh air might be nice.

It’s just a little past five am. Earlier than Kay would ever be up on her own. She’s taken another dose of Sudafed, wrapped the blanket from the couch around her shoulders, and stands now on the front porch’s salt scrubbed boards, watching the rising sun spread across the horizon, watching waves lap at distant rocks. The air’s cool in a way that reminds her of California winters, makes her cold/flu/whatever feel a little less out of place. Maybe it was the change in temperature that made her sick, she thinks as she pulls the blanket closer around her. The plane and the weather. And the stress. The last therapist her dad made her go to talked all the time about _the physical effects of stress_ or whatever _._ And she is stressed. Probably. Can feel it creeping up sometimes. Like in the shower, standing at the kitchen sink. Just like weirdo little blips. When she was back at her mom’s place earlier in the summer, she’d wake up some mornings with a weight on her chest, reaching desperately for her inhaler only to find the sensation gone just as quickly as it had arrived. _Anxiety,_ her mother told her one morning over breakfast when Kay finally got up the courage to actually mention it, _you know your grandmother was hysterical. Hysterical. That’s what they called it back then._ Helpful. As usual. Kay glances down at her phone, feels that quick spike of anxiety before it disappears in the undertow. That’s probably why she had that asthma attack. Latent stress. Or whatever. A breeze comes in off the ocean, rustling the leaves, some tinged already in yellow. The air has a salt to it. The sky a soft pink fading up to a blue so pale it’s almost white, the sun cutting a line of gold toward the stars, scattering across the water. Kay can hear, if she really listens, waves crashing against the rocky beach. It’s beautiful. She feels like shit.

Texting her roommate isn’t going to make her feel any better. But she does it anyway as she waits for the kettle to boil on the stove, rising up onto her toes then slowly back down, like it’ll soothe the way her whole body still aches.

_heyyyy_

_how r u_

Kay sniffles. She brushes her hair behind her ears. She does the tip toe thing again. And again. Glances over at the blue gas flame licking up the sides of the kettle. It might be as old as the house is, a few dents in the metal, a rim of char at the base. Kay opens her phone. No response. She’s probably not up yet. It’s like way early. And she’s probably busy right? Moving to a new place with a new job and all that. Kay purses her lips then opens Instagram. Her roommate posted yesterday. It’s a picture of her taken a little from above, flanked on either side by girls Kay’s never seen before, all of them with their tongues caught in their teeth, smiling. The kind of blurry darkness that makes Kay think they’re in a bar. She clicks the geotag. Yeah, a bar. In some hip San Francisco neighborhood. She swipes back to the photo, tries to ignore the sharp, sudden twinge in her chest. When she scrolls down to look at the caption, the twinge becomes an ache. _Me and my best girls._

Kay sets the phone down. Kneads again along her cheekbones, at the corners of her eyes. Her sinuses have tightened up again, her skin hot to the touch. She sighs, reaches for her phone almost roughly and refreshes her Instagram feed. Not even sure what she’s looking for, what she’s hoping to see. Her stepmother’s face pops into the screen and she nearly jumps at the sight. That ache in her chest elaborates, becomes something much less comfortable. She’s on the patio furniture in the back of her dad’s new house, two big ferns at her back. One looks a little limp, a little crispy on the upper leaves. Her baby stepsister looks like she’s caught mid bounce, balanced in her step mom’s lap, her face lit up in a gummy smile. _My sweet girl on a sweet day._ Kay nearly slams her phone onto the counter. The kettle is rattling now, about to whistle. She sniffles, wiping at her nose. “This fucking cold.” Kay heads for the fridge. She opens it and finds it as it was yesterday: empty.

The door dings and Gus waves at her from the kitchen cutout. It makes Kay feel…something. Not an entirely bad something either, though she doesn’t think she’s been a regular anywhere in her entire life. Aware now that she is crossing into completely uncharted territory. But the diner smells like coffee grounds and grease and it’s nice in a sort cozy way. The sun rose into clouds as she headed into town and now the sky is a heavy, low grey, the light in the diner like a glow against the gloomy day. 

Kay coughs as she slides into the booth, facing the pie case so she can watch them spin. It’s a little sparse this early in the morning. A pink cake near the bottom, red cherries piped on the sides, a blueberry pie just above that, and up top a pie crowned with stiff peaks of meringue. She coughs again, nodding at Gus when he comes by with a pot of coffee. The ride up had almost done her in. She’s stopped to walk her bike more than once up the big hill just outside town, but her hunger is worse than her fever and it’s not like they have uber eats out here. But her head’s starting to pound and the prickly feeling in her throat feels ominously like it’s heading down toward her chest. It was dumb to come here. And she knows that. Parked her bike a couple blocks away, worried that Harvey might come out of the clinic and see it. And then….what? She doesn’t know. He probably actually doesn’t give a shit. She scrapes her nails across her scalp, fights the urge to rest her head on the table and take a nap in the booth.

Kay eats three pieces of french toast in the time it takes Gus to come back out with her side of sausages. She swirls them in the soup of syrup and butter left on her plate, eating them with the kind of relish she’s not sure she’s felt about food in a long time. Gus lingers at the counter, smiling as she finishes. “They feed you out in California?”” 

Kay laughs, wiping her mouth, a little sheepish. “Guess not.” A wind rattles the glass. They both turn to look at it. The clouds have darkened, hanging lower now, so close they seem to skim the tall tops of the trees. “Well, I should probably head back before the weather turns.” She twists to rustle through her purse. “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing.” She glances up at him. Gus quirks his head toward the back of the diner. “Doc paid your bill.” Kay spins around to find Harvey sitting in the same spot he’d been the first night she came here, paging through a newspaper between long sips of coffee.

Kay can feel the heat of her own blush crawling up her neck. “He paid for my food?”

Gus chuckles. “Yeah, he tends to do that. Got a tab a mile long. Mostly for other people’s grub.”

Kay exhales, feels a weird cross between disappointment and relief. “Oh.” Harvey looks up, glances from Gus to Kay. He raises his mug, almost a toast. “Guess I should go say thank you, huh?”

Harvey folds his newspaper when Kay approaches. It looks like he’s been picking at his eggs, a piece of half-eaten toast perched on the edge of his plate. “So um,” she stuffs her hands into her back pockets, rocks a little on her heels, “thanks for breakfast.”

“My pleasure.” He sets his knife and fork down on the table and clears his throat. She wonders how long he’s been up, wonders if he went for a ride down by the ocean before the sun came up. Silly, weird thoughts that make her feel so embarrassed it’s almost hard to stand there in front of him. “But I believe I prescribed bed rest.”

Kay muffles an ill-timed cough with the inside of her elbow, finds him a little leaned back when she straightens up again, one eyebrow raised. “I know, I just um, like I don’t have any food at home really. I haven’t gone to the store yet. To get like…real food, you know.” 

“Well, that’s no good.”

Kay straightens up. “And I mean I’m feeling better anyway.” She sniffles.

“I’m glad. Still, I would prefer you to get some rest. Especially since I assume” he glances out the window, then back at Kay, “that you biked here.”

Kay opens her mouth, closes it, makes a humming sound as she tries to think of something to say that isn’t lame or weird or freaky defensive. “I did, yeah. It’s fine though. I’m fine.”

Harvey clears his throat, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Can’t say I’m not skeptical.” Kay feels herself flush. “You look a little pekid.”

“I’m okay, really.” And then, bouncing a little on her toes, “I don’t need a ride home or anything.” But as she says it, she’s thinking about the inside of his station wagon, the soft quiet of the radio, the warmth of the seats. Her injured hand starts to sting like it’s just now remembered to.

“Well, I have an appointment in about fifteen minutes, so I wouldn’t be able to offer you one if you wanted it. But…you should really be resting, Kay.”

“I know.” She shifts on her feet. “I will.”

“Good. I hope you enjoyed your breakfast.” He looks up at her, the diner’s overhead lights glinting on his glasses. “Get home safe.”

She feels heavy on the couch. Wrapped in a blanket, head on one of those decorative pillows. Public broadcasting’s playing some show on clamming boats. The narrator’s voice so smooth and deep that it’s smoothed everything out. A sort of Sudafed soup that lets her watch, a little glazed, as the old rusty looking boats bob in the water, the picture a little blurred from age. The rain the weatherman promised that morning turned up about an hour ago. Just a soft patter against the house’s windows and it has lulled Kay nearly to sleep by the time she hears the first knock. Kay sniffles, sitting up. The world wobbles a little as she does. She listens, sure for a moment that she’d half dreamed the noise, before the knock repeats itself, this time louder. Kay stands, wrapping the blanket around her and heads to the door. Through the watery glass beside it, she can see Evelyn standing on the porch. She opens the doors just a crack, then all the way, the thick scent of cigarette smoke drifting into the house on the chilled evening air. Everything cast in a pale blue, the orange light from the house spilling onto the porch boards. “Well good evening!” She’s wrapped in a house coast the same color as her cherry nails, the same color, Kay remembers, as the interior of the car parked now on the narrow driveway.

“Hi. Evelyn.” Kay leans on the doorframe, her head still heavy, throat stinging a little when she talks. “Can I help you with something?”

Evelyn waves her off. “Oh no.” She turns to retrieve a cloth lined basket and presents it to Kay. “Dr. Harvey told me that you were under the weather so I thought I would bring you something to keep your fridge stocked.”

Kay blinks at her. “I’m, uh, pretty sure that’s a violation of HIPAA.”

“Don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, darling. Now I hope you’re not allergic to anything.”

Kay takes the basket, readjusts when she feels how much heavier it is than she thought it would be. And then it dawns on her. She looks back up at Evelyn. “Wait this is all for me?”

But Evelyn’s already toddling back toward her car. She waves over her shoulder. “Yes, yes. Of course, dear. Feel better soon!”

Kay digs her nails into the wicker of the basket. “Thank you!” She calls after her. “Thank you, I mean it!” Evelyn just waves again, fiddling with her keys in the car door.

Kay sets the basket on the kitchen island and tries not to interrogate why her first instinct is to cry about it. It’s just a plain wicker basket, lined with a checkered cloth. Inside: aluminum trays sealed carefully with foil; a bundle wrapped in parchment. She spots a little notecard tucked at the back of the basket and fishes it out. It’s a got a little printed border of fall leaves and pumpkins and, on the lined center, Evelyn’s neat, looping penmanship,

_Contents  
_ _Baked beans (no meat) good for four servings. Bake in 350-degree oven for 20 minutes to reheat  
_ _Brown bread (with raisins). No need to reheat.  
_ _Piccalilli relish (eat on bread or crackers for snacking)._  
_Lobster pie (lobster is out of season and spendy. Substituted crab meat and mussels). Good for six servings. Same reheat as beans.  
_ _Blueberry slab pie. 45 seconds in microwave or room temperature._

Kay beats the card against her palm, looks out the window at the soft rain. The evening news comes on in the living room, a sort of staticky little chime before the anchor starts talking. She sniffles, looks back at the basket.

She’s full and warm and drowsy. Tucked back under that blanket, watching the weather now, trying to remember what her mother taught her about thank you cards, about etiquette. She’ll pick something up from the General Store, she decides, once she’s feeling better. Some stationary to write a thank you, maybe one of those jars of jam. When her phone buzzes, Kay nearly rolls off the couch trying to extricate herself from her cocoon, settles on her knees in front of the coffee table and slides it open. It’s a text from Haley. Which is both a relief and a disappointment. Because she hasn’t heard back from her roommate. Or her mom. Or anyone else. But she can’t help but feel a little jump in her chest at the message.

_so r u dead or_

Kay grins, pulling the blanket from the couch and draping it over her shoulders.

_ya_

_literally a corpse_

A strong wind shakes the house, the windowpanes rattling. Kay glances up, watches the shadow of the trees tremble in the dark. 

_2 bad u were cool_

Kay’s grin widens.

_so what_

_am I allowed to haunt you then_

Haley responds immediately.

_lol prolly wouldnt notice_

_this town is 2 haunted_

Kay frowns. The house is creaking under the strain of the wind and she remembers that first night, the way she’d hidden under her blanket until morning.

_wait really_

Kay watches as dots appear, then disappear, then appear again.

_lol no idk_

Kay brushes her hair from her face and exhales. _Up next,_ the narrator chimes as the tv switches to the scheduling screen, _Gary Lambata’s Seafood Delights._ She glances over at her empty plate on the table. Lobster (not lobster) pie. A casserole with a ritz topping that was seriously fucking good. And it makes her feel…something thinking about it. About her free breakfast. Kay tries to imagine how Harvey told Evelyn. If he called her, if he went over to her house. She looks down at her phone

_so_

_what’s the deal with Harvey_

Haley responds immediately.

_???_

Kay bites her lip, thinking, then types it out.

_jw I guess_

Her phone buzzes between her fingers. 

_u have a crush on him or something_

Even through the fever, Kay can feel herself go beat red. She types quickly.

_omg_

_wtf_

_no way_

The wind howls a little outside. Gary Lambata smiles from over his grill, chef’s hand perched on his head. _Today we’re cooking cod!_

_busted_

_teasing_

_idk_

_hes the doctor_

_nothing to say_

Kay chews on the skin around her lip, free thumb hovering over the keys.

_he had Evelyn bring me food_

_is that_

_normal?_

Haley’s response is quick.

_pretty standard for him yeah_

Kay nicks her nail with her teeth, holds her hand out in front of her, watches a little prick of blood swell against the skin. That feeling, whatever it is, is growing.

_but im like not from around here._

The dots appear again. And for what feels like minutes, it seems like Haley doesn’t really know what to say. Then finally: 

_so?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of wild to write about sickness in the time of Covid, but kind of freeing too, I guess. I hope you all are safe and well. And thank you, as always, for reading <3
> 
> Oh! And I have a twitter now. Find me at https://twitter.com/EbabelN and come watch me try to figure out how to use it. I'll be posting when I update + just other things I like.


	9. Chapter 9

She’s probably twenty something in the picture. Around the same age Kay is now. Kay can’t be sure exactly where she is though. It doesn’t look like anywhere in California that she knows. A worn split-rail fence at her back. Beyond that, a dusty expanse of field; short dry grass and a wide, blue sky. Texas probably. Her mom never talked about it much. Growing up there. Never once went back. At last not after Kay was born. Her dad didn’t like to talk about it. Would brush her off if she did, hurry the conversation forward.

It must have been before she met him then, this picture, before she moved out to California. Kay wishes she had the photo in her hands, wishes she could turn it over. Find a scrawled date, a little note. Her mom’s got her dark hair feathered out, long, half pulled up in the back. A pair of white jeans tight over her long legs, cinched at the waist. A plaid shirt tucked in, billowy, three buttons undone up top. And she’s smiling. In the sly way her mom does, but with teeth. Something that looks almost wrong on her mom’s features, almost unnatural. Out of time. That’s probably why Kay took the picture in the first place. It’s a bad photo, the sort of warped glare-y sheen to it that only photographs of photographs have. Kay posted it to Instagram a year ago. Doesn’t really remember where she found it. Probably in some drawer she wasn’t supposed to be going through. Home for the summer. Bored out of her fucking mind. _#tbt_

Kay takes a long breath and settles back onto the porch, leaning against the wall just beside the front door, legs stretched out in front of her. The temperature’s comfortable. Chilly enough to warrant jeans but not a jacket. The sky a solid sheet of grey. The sun hidden, its light diffuse in the air. She stretches, fumbles blindly for the plate sitting beside her. She’s piled Evelyn’s relish onto two thick slices of that dark bread. It’s dense, almost herbal. The relish has a vinegary, mustard-y kick that cleans out her sinuses with each bite. Well, mostly. Her head still feels cramped, her throat still straddling the line between scratchy and outright sore. But the food is helping and so is Pierre’s lemon honey whatever. And so is, even if Kay doesn’t really want to admit it, the memory of Harvey’s hand on her back, that fern sunning itself on his desk. She opens her eyes, hadn’t even realized that she’d closed them, and straightens up. A breeze rustles the leaves of the trees out along the driveway. Clouds have become to form in that grey slate sky. Big, fluffed clouds, dark at their edges. Kay picks up her phone and starts to scroll again through her own profile. She stops at a photo of her uploaded just a few months after the one of her mom. It was her first semester in the studio, she remembers, just her second semester in college. She’s crouched beside a canvas nearly as tall as she is, a tin of linseed oil at her feet, at palette knife in one hand. Her hair was long then, braided and slung over one shoulder and she is smiling so big the whole room is lit with it. Kay smiles back at the photo, looks out at the ocean in the distance. The sky feels lower than it did before, like the clouds are coming down to kiss the ocean. Her phone pings in her palm. It’s a dm from Haley. Kay sits up a little more, pulls her legs in and crosses them.

_hey_

Another ping.

_can we talk about art_

Kay cocks her head, reads the message again. Out of the blue, really. Or maybe not. She chews a little on her lip, shifts on her hips.

_yeah sure_

Kay nearly drops her phone when it starts to ring. Stares at a it for a beat too long before picking it up and answering it. “Hello?”

“Hey.” Kay can hear music playing in the background, can hear what she thinks might be the clicking of a pen near the phone. Haley sounds, as always, like she’s only half paying attention, her voice clipped, a little dreamy. “Figured this might be easier.”

Kay settles back against the wall, stretching her legs out again, taking a quick bite of some of the relish. “Yeah, okay, sure.”

“Wow, you sound like shit.”

“Well, I’m sick so.”

“Did you go see Harvey?”

Kay feels herself blush, the heat of it in her cheeks. “Yeah, I mean, yeah I did. I’m like fine.” She lays her wrist on her forehead. Would she even know if she had a fever? She’s warm to the touch but she’s just been feeling like that lately. Hot and weird and sort of shaky. She’d taken the time last night to rifle through her pockets for his phone number, to put it in her phone. She wonders if he’d respond to a text then immediately shakes her head. Dumb. Dumb and weird and all over the fucking place. “Like I’m sick obvi but like, I don’t know, not on my deathbed.”

“’kay good.” There’s a long pause on the line. The music’s sugary pop, Kay hears the pen click faster. “So, um, I don’t know. I don’t want to be weird, but like, I don’t know…”

Kay twists a lock of hair around her finger. “Lol, okay?”

“So what are you making?”

Kay frowns. Another quick, cool breeze comes rolling across the porch, sending old dried leaves scattering across the clapboards. “What do you mean?”

“You know like…with your…you know, painting or whatever.”

“Oh.” Kay coughs into her elbow, chest twinging. “Nothing right now honestly. I didn’t even, like, bring supplies.”

Kay hears Haley’s voice perk up immediately. “Oh, legit? Well, I mean what are you doing right now?”

“What do you think?”

Haley scoffs. “I mean I don’t know you.” She clears her throat. “Listen, okay, I was thinking of like heading into Brunswick like in a couple of hours to go to this art supply store. I need to pick up some stuff for my stop bath and I just, like, hate going alone to shit like that, you know?”

Kay shifts her hips again, trying to shake out the leg that’s going a little numb. “Oh whoa, so you do like _film_ film then?” 

“Um, yeah it’s whatever. So are you down or what?”

Kay sniffles, rolls out her neck to pop a joint. “Yeah, I’m down.”

The weather’s starting to turn when Haley pulls up outside the winery. Those dark edged clouds heavy now on the horizon, a few big drops of raining falling onto the street. Kay slips through the gate, her windbreaker held over her head, and ducks into Haley’s car. The heats blowing, radio on. Haley checks her lipstick in the rearview mirror as Kay clicks her seatbelt. She’s in a pale pink smock dress, her long nails painted the same color. When she turns to check behind her before backing up, her dangling earrings jangle. The rain has started to fall heavier now, thick rivulets of water running down the car’s windshield. “Is it even safe to drive in this weather?”

“Wow,” Haley says, shifting the car into drive, “California must really be a trip.”

“Oh, uh, last minute thing,” Haley says as she rounds the corner toward Main Street. The sidewalks are a little more crowded than Kay’s seen before, maybe a dozen people out and about. A few of them have opened umbrellas, most hurrying now into shops. A woman scurries out of the coffee shop at the end of the road to tuck their chalk sign under her arm, a shock of blue hair fluttering from under her hood as the wind kicks up. Kay glances over at the clinic. There’s a light on in the second-floor window, just a soft orange glow. Kay rocks forward as Haley hits the brakes. “Loser wants to tag along.”

Kay raises an eyebrow. “Who’s loser?” Haley puts the car into park and through the driver’s window, Kay spots Abigail standing out in front the general store’s door. She’s in the same black dress she’d worn to the party, frayed tights tucked into a pair of beat up old rainboots, a jean jacket at least two sizes too big slung over her shoulders. “Oh. Okay then.” Abigail leans down to put her cigarette out on the concrete. “She, uh, helped me pull glass out of my hand last weekend.”

Haley snorts. “Wow great.”

Abigail slides into backseat, slamming the car door shut. The wet scent of cigarettes follows her in. “Is she gonna like get us all sick?”

Haley rolls her eyes, putting the car back in drive. “Probably, but you wanted to go so.”

Kay squirms in her seat, sinuses cramped again. Her chest’s tight too but that, she is sure, is unrelated to the cold. There’s an energy in the car now that she can’t quiet figure, an unspoken something. She cranes her head toward the backseat and smiles. “I’m Kay. I don’t think we had a chance to uh…introduce ourselves.”

“Abigail.” She juts her chin at her, arms crossed. “How’s your hand?”

“Oh uh.” Kay looks down at her fresh bandaid. It doesn’t really sting anymore, itches a little. She remembers wobbling on the exam table. His nimble fingers. _God._ She’s never going to be able to look him in the eye again at this rate, not even sure what she’s doing with this weirdo thoughts anyway. She’s curls her fingers in on her palm. “I’ll live.”

“Cool,” Abigail says, sort of shrugging. Kay watches her glance over at Haley, watches Haley avert her eyes, reach over the turn the radio up.

Art supply shops, Kay discovers, are all kind of the same no matter where you go. This one, not totally unlike the one a few blocks down from her mom’s house, is in the basement of a shopping center. A wide, concrete room with big fluorescent lights, packed to the ceiling with shelving. The distinct overpowering smell of oil pastels and acrylic paint thick in the air. Kay shifts on her feet, letting the canvas she just bought rest on one of the concrete pillars near the register. It’s 30”x20”, pre-stretched. She’s used to working larger scale but when she’d stood in front of those canvases, she’d felt…weird. Sort of empty. Kay shifts the plastic bag from one hand to the other, trying to give her wrist a break. She’d forgotten how heavy linseed oil is even though it’s only been a few months since she last bought it. Picked up a bottle of gesso too, a pair of cheap brushes. The new tubes of oil paints gave her the same weirdo feeling as the big canvases, so she’d rooted through the bin of half empties, cobbling together a sparse, if functional, wheel of color. It all feels kind of familiar. Loitering around by the bins of erasers and little metal pencil sharpeners, waiting for the last person to finish up at the register. But nothing about it, really, is familiar. Her windbreaker is still damp from the rain outside and Abigail is standing quietly across from her, arms crossed, looking at anywhere but Kay. Her own bag’s heavy with thread. To sew on patches, Kay assumes, eyeing the sort of shoddily attached Dead Kennedy’s patch on her jean jacket’s right arm. Kay rocks on the balls of her feet, glances over at the register. Haley’s been arguing with the guy at the counter about dips for almost fifteen minutes, completely oblivious to the absolutely doe-eyed way he’s looking at her. Kay coughs into her elbow, sneezes so hard she bends at the waist.

“Whoa.” Abigail says, looking at her for maybe the first time since they got into town. “You sound terrible.”

“Yeah.” Kay wipes at her nose with her sleeve then flushes, the quick realization of how gross she must look rushing over her. She straightens, clears her throat. “I probably picked it up on the plane over here or something.”

“Oh.” Abigail scuffs her rainboot against the concrete floor. “Is that like a thing that happens a lot?” 

Kay frowns. “You mean on planes?”

Abigail shrugs, looking off toward the aisles again. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Kay shifts her back up, holding it to her hip. “Lot of different people all packed into a small space for like hours and hours. Kind of like a gross breeding ground, I guess.”

“Weird.”

Kay swallows, glancing against over at Haley who is now talking so intensely with her hands that the cashier has taken a step back. “So, um,” she switches the bag into her other hand, “what are you like doing after this?”

Abigail’s eyes widen a little before she just shrugs. “Nothing really.”

Kay runs her teeth over her bottom lip, then she offers the only thing she really knows how to. “You wanna come over and drink?”

Abigail opens her mouth but before she can reply, Haley brushes past them, groaning. “Ugh let’s like get out of here. Idiot doesn’t even know the difference between Acufine and TF-4.”

Abigail stays out on the porch, smoking her way, if the thick plume of smoke outside the kitchen window is any indication, through an entire pack of cigarettes. The three of them picked up a case of Hamms at a gas station just outside Brunswick, the rain gone but the clouds holding. Kay presses a can of beer to her temples before tucking it into the fridge. The metal feels good on her skin, clammy now after the car ride. Her sinuses pulse. “So um.” Haley’s voice is a little quiet.

Kay closes the fridge door. Haley’s got a few beers on the kitchen island, moving them around like a magician hiding a ball. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to say like,” Haley looks over at the stove, fuses with one earing, “I don’t know. Nobody’s asked me about my stuff before.”

Kay sets her beer down on the island. “What?”

“I mean, I don’t know, not to be weird or whatever.”

Kay leans on the kitchen island. The evening sky has cast the whole house is a faint golden glow. “You can be weird. It’s like…it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

Haley laughs nervously, fidgeting with her earring again. “My photos. You asked me what I was taking pictures of. When we met.”

“Oh yeah, I mean I don’t know. Nobody who isn’t serious has a rig like you had out there.”

“Most people don’t like…do that that, I guess. Not here anyway. Not to me.” She shrugs. “I’ve been getting up really early for like a month, photographing the sun as it rises. I want to see if I can find any differences as the seasons change. Or the weather, I don’t know.”

“Wow, that’s…”

“Hokey, I know.”

“I was gonna say cool, actually.”

Haley’s eyes widen a little. She pushes off the island. “Oh, uh, thanks. I mean I don’t have any formal training, so.”

“Formal training is kind of bullshit.”

“Easy for you to say.” Kay flinches. They stand in silence in silence for a beat. Haley picks up a can of beer, turns it over in her hand. “Anyway.” She tucks the other beers under her arm. “Let’s drink this shit, yeah?”

Haley texts her when she gets home. Just a string of emojis and a _dont let the ghosts get you ;)._ And it makes Kay feel…nice really. Nice enough that she lugs the new canvas to the house’s covered back porch, stands back on the tile floor in front of it. The room’s a little muggy. Not ideal for oils but Kay likes the way the rain looks on the glass as it falls, another storm blowing in off the ocean.

She didn’t bring painting clothes, hardly brought any clothes at all, so she shimmies out of her jeans, pulls her shirt over her head, and settles back onto the tile in just her underwear. It feels almost instinctual as she screws the lid of the gesso, that quick hit of ammonia in the air as she pells of the protective paper. She paints a thin coat of it onto the canvas, then another, coughing into her elbow as she works. The thin layers will texture the paint, bring an added element that Kay likes the idea of. She leans back on her hand and takes a long, deep breath. And then she stares. At the canvas. At the tile. At her own hands. That nice feeling gone as quickly as it came. The wind howls, the rain outside splashing against the windows. Kay closes her eyes and takes another long breath. Her senior showcase had been all still lifes. The biggest, her centerpiece, a table full of broken things. Densely colored and closeup like a Caravaggio. A smashed vase laid atop the lacy tablecloth, a corded phone with the wires ripped out, a cracked bottle of wine. She’d written her artist's statement on the _lushness of the modern everyday,_ the _pleasure of viewing destruction._ Her dad had, after a few drinks after the event, called it bullshit. It kind of feels like bullshit now. Bland, boring. Unoriginal. Kay flicks the canvas, her nail leaving just the faintest indent in the still drying gesso. The wind rattles the house, that quiet howl from the attic. Like the very first night. Kay picks up her phone, opens Instagram, closes it. She coughs into her elbow and the cough becomes a wheeze. Kay freezes, sits upright. She takes a long breath, holds it, exhales. Her lungs feel fine. Totally fine. She stands, takes another breath. Then sneezes. Her head throbs. _Rest_ , he’d said, warm hand on her back, _rest_. She glances back at the blank canvas, at the rivers of rain down the windows. Kay puts her hand on her sternum and takes a long breath. _Rest._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I took some liberties with how well equipped a small medical clinic in coastal Maine would probably be and tried to like sort of make the game’s layout? possible? I hope you can forgive me ;)

She dreams of gesso. A sea of it, crashing white and thick across the rocky shore. In the dream, it feels soothing, sort of right. The air smells like it. Chemical. But it isn’t noxious, smells instead like it’s coasting on the salt in the air. Alchemy almost. She can taste the salt of it on her tongue, a tang like the skin of a lemon.

Kay smiles, bends to ease herself down off the rocks onto the sand. It’s damp, chilled, gives easily under the weight of her steps. A thick fog has settled over the beach. The distant beams of the lighthouse a flash of cadmium yellow through the air, thick like the stroke of a brush, vanishing into the fog as it passes. There’s someone out in the distance, crouched over the tidepools beside the bluff. She can’t see them through the fog, just their shape. The dream feels like it’s gone on forever. Kay opens her mouth to call out to them but she inhales the air hits the back of her throat like a wall. Her chest tightens, ribcage stiff and unyielding. In the dream, Kay can’t breathe. She opens her eyes, the boiling yellow of the late afternoon sun streaming across her quilt, and tries to take a breath. Awake, Kay can’t breathe either.

She sits bolt upright, nearly tumbling from the narrow bed. Her first instinct is to curl in on herself, hands stiff against her chest. But she remembers all those long visits when she was a kid, cold hands between her shoulder blades. _Sit up straight, give your lungs some space._ Kay wheezes then pulls herself so quickly upright that a muscle in her back twinges. And it does help. A little. The iron-clad grip her ribs have on her lungs loosens up enough for her to take a quick, trembling breath. Then another. Kay rakes her fingers through her hair, sits up higher on her shins, and tries to slow her breathing, tries to pull it back deep into her lungs. They feel like sandbags, like the bottom of the ocean. She cranes her neck back, takes a few shallow breaths and it still feels like her lungs a burning a hole in her chest but she can breathe still and she tells herself that’s enough. 

She feels a little better when she heads down the stairs but by the time the kettle she put on starts to whistle her lungs are tight again, breath caught at the back of her throat. Kay tries to take another deep breath, hands pressed hard against the kitchen counter, but her lungs twinge and she coughs until her throat aches.

The oven clock blinks five pm. She’s slept through the entire day but every part of her still feels heavy like she hasn’t slept at all. Kay slices a lemon, spoons out some of Pierre’s honey, and tries to ignore the way she can hear her breathing, wheezy and shallow. She never has asthma attacks this close together, _never._ It’s the cold. It’s the weather. She takes a sip of tea. Her throat feels too tight to swallow. She spits it into the sink. Kay stays bent over the counter for a long time, too long, paralyzed, frozen. She wheezes again, curls her fingers into fists.

Kay strips down and lets the shower run, lets the steam fill the room. She traces the grout around the tile, tries not to panic, tries to breathe. The former is easier than the latter but soon the former overtakes her too. And she’s shaking, wheezing, her chest tight and tightening. Her last inhale goes nowhere and that’s it’s. She knows that it’s. Has known. Should have done something much earlier than this. Stubborn. Stupid. And then she’s scrambling naked down the hall to her room, scattering the contents of her purse. She’s on her hands and knees when she finds it, half covered by the quilt just under the bed. It takes her two tries to prime it and by the time she brings her inhaler to her mouth she’s shaking so badly that the first spray scatters across her lips, a little up one cheek. It’s bitter and noxious and the world has started to wobble. Kay shakes the inhaler, brings it back to her mouth and presses again.

She waits for it to help. The clouds outside darkening, the room falling into shadow. She coughs and wheezes and the panic that had been simmering inside of her spills over. Because it isn’t helping. Not at all. Her lungs tighter even than when she started, her throat like a wall. Kay fumbles along the floor until she finds her phone, then for something, anything, to put on.

The trees blur as Haley drives. Kay doesn’t even remember what she told her over the phone, doesn’t even remember getting in her car. But they’re driving way too fast now, Kay clutching her inhaler in her lap, Haley white knuckling the wheel. The radio’s up loud but Kay can still hear Haley over it. _Fuck_ and _god_ and _oh my god_ and even though her chest feels like it’s cracking open, she has just enough wherewithal to be lividly fucking embarrassed. Because there’s got to be a limit on the number of times someone you just met will drive you to the hospital and Kay’s got to be soaring over that limit now. Haley takes a hard turn, water spraying up on one side of the car and the way it jostles Kay in her seat starts a coughing fit that quickly devolves into weak wheezing. Haley looks over, eyes wide. “Holy fucking shit. Holy fucking fuck shit.” _I’m fine,_ Kay tries to say but finds she can’t, gripping the door handle tightly. Haley speeds up.

He had practically hoisted her up onto the examination table. A flurry of movement and light and the almost painful chill of metal on the skin of her shins. But his voice had remained steady, low, calm. Even if she can’t remember what he’d told her, what he’d said, she does remember that. The way his voice had soothed something inside of her. The way he hadn’t sounded afraid and that had made her less afraid. And it’s still calm, still steady, even now that she’s out of the bright light of the examination room in another, smaller room just down the hall. It’s a shoebox but a cozy one. A narrow bed pushed up against the far window, neatly made with a quilt that’s soft under her palms. The drapes on the window a floral pattern, another small fern on the sill. If it hadn’t been for the iv pole beside the bed and various other medical accouterments on the far side of the room, it might have felt like a room at a little seaside motel. But Kay’s still trembling, shaking like a loose coin on the side of the bed where Harvey’s perched her. Her arm’s sore where he’d given her a shot. She’s not sure of what but she can at least breathe now, even if it does have a certain Darth Vader quality to the sound of it.

Harvey wheels his chair over from the counter to her bedside. He’s dressed in what she assumes is something of a uniform for him: white button down, red tie, tailored slacks, but today he’s wearing a white doctor’s coat over it all and that sooths her even more. Which is embarrassing. To say the fucking least. Her vision wobbles. Kay tightens her grip on the side of the bed. “I’m a little dizzy.”

Harvey sets his pen down, balances the clipboard on one knee. “That’s a pretty common side effect of the prednisone.”

“Prednisone?”

“A steroid shot.” He stands, sets his clipboard down on the bedside table. “Haley said she thought you’d used your rescue inhaler more than once. Better safe than sorry.”

“Is Haley still here?”

“I believe she had to go back to work.”

Kay frowns. “ _Back_ to work?”

Harvey rolls his sleeves up and Kay notices the watch around his right wrist. A practical circle on a simple leather band. She finds that comforting too, even if she isn’t sure why. The warm light of evening falls over him as he moves toward the window. He pulls the stethoscope from around his neck and slots it into his ears before rubbing his hands together. “Might be a little cold,” he says as he pushes her shirt up her back. She flinches at the chill of the scope. “Sorry about that.” Kay lets her eyes flutter closed. The panic she’d been feeling is muted here, but it feels close to the surface still, like it might, at any moment, bubble over. “Inhale.” She does, coughing on the exhale. Harvey smooths her shirt back down and comes around to sit again on his chair. “Ideally, at this point you’d be able to take deeper breaths and the coughing would be greatly reduced.” He scrawls a quick note on his pad. “But how are your lungs feeling?”

“Better,” she says, putting a gentle hand on her sternum. “Tight but a lot better.”

“That’s good.” He clicks his pen closed, looking at her from over his glasses. He’s got the prettiest hazel eyes Kay has ever seen and she can feel the heat of her blush come rocketing up her cheeks. “Now I don’t think the situation warrants a transfer to a bigger clinic outside of town but I’d like you to stay here tonight. Just so I can keep an eye on you.”

He teaches her how to hold the nebulizer and she watches his hands the whole time. Long fingers, neat nails. She finds herself, humiliatingly, looking for a wedding ring she doesn’t find. “Breathe,” he tells her, “just as you would normally.” The mist comes almost chilled from the device. It fills her mouth then, mercifully, her lungs. Kay sighs, can feel the way her chest has started to release, to open. “It’s a ten minute treatment.” Outside, Kay can hear muffled talking from the waiting room, Maru laughs, a phone rings. “And it should make you much more comfortable.” He picks up his pad, skimming it quickly, before looking back up at Kay with a reassuring smile. “I’d like to discuss long term treatment in the morning if that’s alright with you. The rescue inhaler you have currently clearly isn’t working.”

Harvey comes back into the room when the treatment ends, his white coat off, sleeves still rolled to his elbows. Kay notices the dark smattering of hair on his forearms, tells herself that the sort of shimmery way it makes her feel is just a side effect of the breathing treatment. But there _is_ a certain something to him. A manliness about him, a sort of adult-ness that has made the fact that she’s stuck here for the night a whole lot easier to wrap her head around. So embarrassing, _god._ “Still doing alright?”

Kay sits up, rests her chin on her bent knees. The bed is a little stiff but the sheets are soft, the quilt warm. She feels a brief flash of homesickness. A strange, almost nauseous feeling of melancholy but she pushes it quickly down. “Yeah. Much better.”

“Good.” Harvey opens the door all the way and then, to her surprise, rolls a television set into the room. It’s one of those old, thick ones. Resting on a cart like they used to in elementary school. He rolls it near the bed, stands back to check and see if it’s in her eyeline, then looks almost sheepishly over his shoulder at Kay. “I figured you might get bored in here all by yourself.” He shrugs, scratching at his neck. “I just keep this old thing around for when I do presentations for elementary school kids at the clinic. Pretty much only gets public broadcasting but I thought you might appreciate the background noise.”

“I don’t mind public broadcasting.”

Harvey raises both eyebrows. “Really? Guess I thought that was more of a my generation thing.” Kay wants to ask him which generation that is, wants to figure out if her guess of his age is even in the ballpark. But her mouth is cottony and she’s still shivering from the attack, from the panic that had settled in after. Harvey puts his hands in the pockets of his slacks, nods to himself. “I have a few more patients this evening, but I’ll pop in between to check on you, alright?”

Kay nods. “Sure, yeah.” He turns to go but pauses at the door when she clears her throat. He glances over his shoulder back at her. “I just…um…thanks again for…you know.”

His eyes soften, hand resting on the doorframe. “It’s my job, Kay. It’s not a problem.”

She drifts off to the sound of the tv, wakes up to the high pitch of a jingle that reminds her so much of the tv she used to watch with her mom when she was a kid that she is, briefly, disoriented. The jingle fades as text dances across the screen. _The Queen of Sauce._ The title card fades to a kitchen, everything draped in the unmistakable golden haze of late nineties tv. The woman behind the counter is tall and wiry, her blonde hair scraped back into a ponytail, a red apron tied tightly around her waist. “Blueberry season is near over my Down Easters so why don’t we go out with a bang.” Kay watches it with half-lidded eyes. Her heart feels almost slow, chest achy. Her lungs are clear at least, but each breath like a little test, like at any moment they might seize up again. Kay rolls onto her side, looks across the sheets at her bandaged hand. She’d almost forgotten about that night, about the stitches, about everything. God, she’s such a mess. An absolutely fucking mess. And thinking about it reignites that panicked feeling, more intense this time, a little different. It’s a lonely feeling now. Like waking up in the middle of the night at a sleepover, desperate suddenly to go home. She’s alone here. Alone in this tiny town. But not even just here. Everywhere she’s alone. Home, campus. Everywhere. She swallows the sudden urge to call her mom. _Come get me. I want to go home._ But the place she wants to go doesn’t exist anymore, never will again. The knock startles her. Just two quick raps before Harvey slides into the room. She hadn’t realized before that he’d dimmed her lights, the bright lights from the hall filtering in through the crack in the door. “Hope I didn’t wake you.”

“No, I was up.” Her voice is still raspy.

“How are those lungs?”

“Fine. Better.”

He nods, brushing his hands together. “So, I just want to let you know that the clinic is closing. The door at the end of the hallway goes to my apartment. If you need anything, don’t hesitate, alright?”

Kay props herself up on her arm. “Yeah, okay.” He nods and she notices that he looks tired, imagines he’s been on his feet all day. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem, Kay.” He steps from the room. “Get some rest.” He shuts the door, leaving it open just enough to let a beam of light from the hall shine in. Kay lays back down, spreads her fingers across the soft fabric of the sheets. She closes her eyes. Listens to the clocking ticking quietly above her, the muted voices from out in the hall. Another jingle starts on the tv. The same woman’s voice. “And that my Mainer friends is the secret to a perfect crust.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much <3


	11. Chapter 11

The chatter wakes her. Just the sound of soft voices through the door, a sprinkle of laughter. And for a moment, sunlight spilling blearily across the room’s smooth tile, Kay doesn’t know where she is. It doesn’t last long, that suspended feeling, before the night before comes drifting back. Her chest tightens but when she inhales – closing her eyes, brushing her fingers against the stitching on the quilt – her lungs expand. They ache, but they move. Kay turns onto her back, watching as the leaves from outside trees cast shadows across the ceiling, shivering in the breeze. She lays her hands on her stomach, lets her eyes drift just closed, and listens to the steady rhythm of conversation out in the hall. She recognizes Harvey’s voice but not the others, listens until it fades away.

She opens one eye when she hears her door creak, sits up on her elbow to get a better look. And she’s not sure who she expects, who else it could possibly be, but seeing Harvey in the doorway still sends a jolt right through her.

He smiles, slipping inside, pushing the door closed with a soft click. He’s in a green sweater today, a pair of slacks, and hair looks just a little tousled, a curled lock falling across his forehead. “Oh, you’re awake.” His voice is soft, just above a whisper, like he’s trying to coax her gently more awake. “I was just coming to check on you.”

Kay sits up, lays her hand on her chest almost instinctually. She feels just a flicker of embarrassment – for the frantic call, for the panic, for being here at all – but the room is so quiet that it feels out of place. She lets it drift off, glancing over her shoulder out the window. There isn’t much of a view, just the brick of the next-door storefront, but the sun’s out, brighter than she’s ever seen it here in Maine. And that throws her equilibrium off. Like it could be six am or noon. “What time is it?”

“Ten-thirty. AM. Did you sleep alright?”

Kay turns away from the window. Harvey is over by the counter now, flipping through the first pages of his notepad. “Yeah.” She wipes at one eye. “Heavy.” And it had been. Dreamless and deep. One minute she’d been listening to the quiet tempo of public broadcasting and the next she’s here.

“Good,” he says, glancing up at her, “you probably needed it.” She notices just the faintest hint of stubble on his chin and cheeks, looks away at the tv still sitting on its stand from last night, worried that if he catches her looking, he’ll see the heat she can’t seem to school out of her glance. Harvey unwinds the stethoscope from around his neck. “Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to have a listen to your lungs.” She almost thanks him for asking, almost tells him what she’d thought before, about how doctors never ask her permission. About how it means a lot that he does. But instead, she just shifts her legs over the side of the bed, straightens up, hisses a little when he slips his hand under her shirt, the metal of the scope pressing against her bare skin. “Sorry about the cold.”

Kay is not really listening; not like she should be. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, fingers curled over the edge of the mattress, trying to figure out what colors she’d use to paint his eyes. A base of yellow ochre, probably. Mix in some pine green, light brown, a hint of manganese blue just in one corner, just to pull out the golden undertones. “Kay.” A little cadmium orange, watered down, just along the pupil to pull in the green. “Kay?”

She starts, flexing her fingers, straightening her spine like she’s just been rapped on the knuckles. “Sorry, I…”

He lets her trail off, furrows his brow. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Yeah sorry, just zoned out. Could you um…would you mind starting from the top. I, um, I think I missed most of that.”

He chuckles, flipping back a page on his pad. “I was saying that your lungs sound fine now but given the severity of your attack last night I think it would be wise to investigate a different cocktail in your inhaler, possibly consider additional medications that might make your attacks less frequent and less severe.” With each suggestion he taps his notes and Kay finds herself again looking at his long fingers, neatly trimmed nails. She’s sure she’s going to combust. Red probably from the roots of her hair to her toes. She’s hyper aware of him, of herself. Hyper aware that the last time she had a crush like this it was her freshman year. On a guy similarly out of her reach. She humiliated herself at a party in front of him, the memory so raw she can only coast around its edges even now. Kay digs her fingers back into the mattress, tries not to squirm. “I’m really not usually this much of a mess.” Which she doesn’t meant to say but does.

Harvey leans back to clean his glasses with a small cloth and the movement brings her solidly back to the room. She’s twenty-three. A college graduate. She’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine. She cannot _believe_ she just said that to her doctor. “I wouldn’t call you a mess.” 

“What would you call me then?”

Harvey chuckles. “A woman in need of a different treatment plan for her asthma. And a car.” Kay laughs and it feels easy. Easy like the way him calling her a woman felt nice, felt…like something. She brushes her hair back behind her ears. It’s a little stiff, almost grimy, and she’s suddenly all too aware of how shitty she must look. And of how badly she doesn’t want to look shitty in front of him. Especially with the way he looks now. Awake and sharp. Ironed and crisp. He smelled, when he pressed the stethoscope to her bare back, like a bar of soap, like a cup of coffee. “Well,” he says, rising to his feet, “Gus brough some donuts over this morning. Coffee too. You’re welcome to them.” He flips the first page back over the notebook and raps it with his knuckles. “Maru will get you handled with paperwork at the front desk. And I’ll be in touch over the phone about prescriptions.” Kay stands. She’s slept in her jeans and the fabric feels stiff, almost chafing. “Oh, and Kay?” He calls over his shoulder, one hand on the door. “Get a car. Seriously.” 

It’s a chilly day. Even with the sun out. A depths of winter kind of temperature by California standards, but none of the people she sees milling around the sidewalk are even wearing coats. And even she has to admit that the nip in the air makes her feel a little less grimy, a little more awake. A few leaves skitter across the road, some of them reddening along the edges. In the trees, pops of yellow and gold blot out the green. Kay fishes her phone out of her back pocket, hesitates, then dials the number.

Haley picks up on the first ring, sounds bored. “Yo.”

“Hey.”

“So you’re not dead.”

Kay grins. “Not yet.

“Cool.” A pause on the line. “Cool.”

Kay stops along the sidewalk near The Dress Barn, one hand in the pocket of her jeans, scuffing the toe of her sneaker against the cobblestone. “So, um, I owe you big time.”

“Nah.”

“No seriously.”

She can hear Haley shifting on the line. “It’s like not a thing dude, really, you don’t have to make it a thing.”

A crow calls from atop one of the heavy oaks that line the opposite street. Kay watches it take flight, coast along the air toward the gazebo in the distance. “Dude like at least let me buy you a meal or a coffee or something.” A drink, is what she would have offered back home, but Kay’s not sure she’s even seen a bar here. At least not on Main Street.

She hears clicking on the line, can almost see Haley rapping her manicured nails. “Sure, okay. Whatever. I get off work in ten.”

Haley smells like potpourri, like candles from bed bath and beyond. The same sort of lasting impression The Dress Barn left Kay with the one and only time she visited. And she’s wearing one of those maxi skirts displayed in the front windows. This one a muted floral that Haley’s rolled up to reveal the tops of her leather ankle boots, a cashmere-y sweater falling just a little off one shoulder. It doesn’t suit her at all and Haley can probably feel that too, tugging at the collar of the sweater, shifting in her seat. “Uniform.” She says with a shrug. “Sort of. I try to blend into the background so the tourists won’t talk to me at work.” Kay snorts and Haley smiles, just a little, before giving her a long once over then slouching into the coffee shop’s high backed chair and declaring: “you look like shit”

Kay scoffs. “Damn, let me have it.”

Haley snickers “Just saying. You need a shower.”

Kay laughs, leaning back in her own chair. Wicker, like the kind you put on a covered porch. The coffee shop is, honestly, exactly what she expected. Drawing from her entirely movie and tv based idea of what that might be. It definitely doesn’t look like any of the coffee shops she used to go to back home. There aren’t any plants, for one, just a few bouquets of dried flowers on every other table. No long vining pothos snaking across neatly groomed tile, no chrome fixtures. It’s all wood in here. Most of it dark, a cabinet here or there painted in a chalky bright color. The knickknacks on every shelf and table make the room feel small even with its high ceiling, big front windows. And this place has all kinds of things. A big taxidermized pheasant watching over the bar; a Japanese beckoning cat by the register. Kay lifts the snow globe in the center of their table, gives it a shake. They both watch confetti snow drift over a tiny reproduction of an old sailing ship. _USS Constitution. Boston. 1997_ written in swirling script at the bottom. The walls are just as cluttered. Old photographs and tin signs, framed maps. Above the bar, a shelf full of mismatched mugs. The furniture’s like that too. Not a single matching table or chair. And at the very back of the room, Kay can see a big brick fireplace, wonders if they get it going in winter. Thinks that just the idea of it might be the coziest thing in the world. The clatter of china makes her jump, pulls her back from her long look around the room to the table. A woman is standing beside their table, tall and wiry. A ring glints from one nostril, her hair an almost neon blue in the orange-y light of the shop. She’s got an apron tied tightly around her waist, a tattoo on the bicep of one of her muscled arms. When she moves it to push a mug of coffee closer to Kay, she can see it’s of a mermaid. A pin-up, seaweed hair drifting across the woman’s shoulder. “Oh,” Kay says, reaching for her purse, “thank you. How much do I owe you?” But the woman just winks, flits away back toward the bar. Kay glances over at Haley. “Do we pay up front then?”

Haley’s drink has a thick swirl of whipped cream atop it and Kay watches her scoop some into her mouth with a single finger. “We don’t have to pay here.”

“What?”

Haley nods toward the woman, back now at the register. “She’s my sister so.”

“Whoa.” Kay turns, squints. It’s hard to see much of a resemblance.

When she turns back, Haley looks slightly withered. She shrugs, taking another bite of whipped cream. “Yeah we don’t like…it’s not like…we don’t really look alike.” Haley swallows. “Two different dads.”

“Oh. Gotcha. Does she…”

“She owns this place, yeah.”

“Wow. Cool.” Haley leans a little back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest. She takes her phone out, scrolls, then slips it back into her purse. “You’re gonna have to let me pay for something eventually.”

Haley scoffs. “Why? You like don’t even have a job.”

Kay laughs because it probably should feel like a jab, but it doesn’t. Because the coffee is like really, really good and because her lungs feel shaky but clear and because if she really, really tries she can catch a whiff of the detergent that doctor Harvey uses, the one she smelled all night on the quilt. And this place is nice. Nice in a real way. Nice in a way she’s not sure she’s ever felt before. “Speaking of jobs. Did you leave work for me yesterday?”

Haley shakes her head noncommittally. “Don’t worry about it. Jodi’s like…pretty chill. And I just like explained the situation to her and it was fine.”

“Well, I appreciate it.”

“It’s like not a thing.” She takes a sip of her drink, wipes quickly at the line of whipped cream it leaves on her lip. “Hey but for real though, are you okay?”

Kay shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m stressed, I guess.”

“Stressed, yeah.”

“I swear I’m not usually this much of a mess.”

Haley’s laugh is breathy. “You’re like the most interesting thing to happen to this town honestly.”

“Not exactly what I was hoping to be.”

Haley fiddles with one of her earrings, a wide, gold hoop. A young couple passes the window, heading down toward the gazebo, a sleeping child in the man’s arms. “Embrace it. Whatever.”

"So,” Haley says as they head out onto the sidewalk. The sky’s a little more overcast now, but the street’s even busier than it had been that morning. Packed with people Kay hasn’t seen before. Tourists, she figures, remembering now what Pierre said about the start of peak season. “Are you still like trying to buy a car or whatever? I know you mentioned it back in Brunswick”

“Fuck,” Kay sighs, “yeah, I need to.”

“Cool. Cool.” Haley tosses her hair back. “Because I have something in mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3 
> 
> Oh! I lost the password to my old tumblr (as one does) so now you can find me [here](https://junkbabelna.tumblr.com/)


	12. Chapter 12

“So, um, I’m gonna guess you know this guy.” They’ve been sitting in her car for almost half an hour, parked just a ways down the road from a farmhouse, its dark gabled roof poking out over the tops of the trees, livid with full color now.

Haley’s practically fuming, her knuckles white from how hard she’s holding the wheel. The stereo’s on just a little too loud. “Why do you say that?”

Kay looks back over the dash. It was a quick drive from town that brought them out here. Coasting across sloping road and rolling hills that made Kay’s stomach flip more than once. But it feels like another place entirely. Out here, the trees seem to be king, the ocean gone completely.

Today the sky is a perfect blue, just a solid stripe of cerulean that seems to make the bright yellows and oranges of the leaves look even more vivid. But despite the sun, there’s a chill in the air. The heater is Haley’s car chugging; Kay’s lips a little cracked from the dry heat of it. Which makes Haley’s outfit even more ridiculous. A tennis skirt that drifts high on her thighs, silky camisole straining against the most generous pushup bra Kay has ever seen in her life. She’s wearing a shearling coat, sure, but Kay can already see goosebumps spreading across her legs even despite the blowing heat in the car. “No reason.”

Haley releases the wheel and tuns the radio off, a thick silence settling between them. She huffs, sitting back in her seat. The movement kicks up her perfume. It’s sugary, floral. “He’s a piece of shit.” She kills the engine. “But he’s selling his car for like really cheap.” She crosses her arms over her chest, the bangles around her wrist clanking. “And besides, if you own it, maybe I’ll finally get to key it.”

Kay scoffs, unbuckling her seatbelt. “You are _not_ allowed to key my car.”

Haley rolls her eyes, just one side of her mouth ticking up. “We’ll see.”

Kay pauses, door half open, her hand on the handle. A chilly wind comes rolling down the road, a few leaves caught swirling along with it. The air smells like them. Damp, earthy. Somewhere someone’s got a bonfire going, a quick nip of woodsmoke on the wind. Kay can’t catch the scent of the ocean anymore, not this far out. “Why do you want to see him anyway?” It’s a stupid question. She’s put two and two mostly together, but figures Haley’s answer will tell her most of what she needs to know about how the next hour or so is gonna go.

“He’ll fuck you over if you go alone.” She scrunches up her nose. “And I want to see his dumb face. He just got back from college and…” She trails off, then stiffens, opening the driver’s side door and slipping out. “Idiot.”

They waited a couple of weeks to do this. Haley stalling, shifting their plans back further and further. Which had been fine, honestly. Kay hadn’t been going anywhere. Laid out on the couch mostly, waiting for that nasty plane bug to work its way out of her system. And it has now. Her hand healed too in the meantime, leaving a silvery scar across her palm. The stitches came out on their own, just kind of disappeared one day. She’d even called to make sure they were supposed to do that, annoyed Maru to hell over the phone before finally being reassured that, yes, she didn’t need to come in for Harvey to take a look. Embarrassingly, she’d been a little disappointed by that. Was kind of hoping she could use that as another reason to see him. The last time had been just a few days after her night at the clinic when she’d sat, heart pounding, in the same examination room where he’d stitched her palm. He’d upped the dosage on her rescue inhaler, prescribed an herbal turmeric supplement. _That_ Kay remembers in absolutely vivid detail because after he’d written the script, he’d broken into a bright, wistful smile. _Not everyone will agree with me,_ he’d said, leaning back in his chair, hands folded at his waist, _but my roommate in medical school was studying naturopathy. There’s something to all that._ He hadn’t even said anything hot, anything even remotely sexy, but there was something about the smooth, deep tenor of his voice, the long line of his body as he stretched out in the chair. Kay’s thoughts spun.

And Jesus motherfucking Christ, her brain can’t seem to let it go. She’s been thinking about him at an almost alarming tempo. Boredom, she tried to tell herself at first, her brain turning to mush after days of nothing but public broadcasting and the steadily yellowing grape leaves out in front of the house to keep her company. But two nights ago, she’d had a dream about him so vivid that it’s still hanging over her. She doesn’t even really want to think about it now, too embarrassing, but pieces of it are really sticking to her. His long, nimble finger between her legs, Kay clinging to him, arms wrapped around his neck. His glasses laid on rumpled sheets, the rough feeling of his facial hair against the skin of her cheek. “Yo!” Kay starts. Haley’s standing on the side of the road, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Even from a few feet away, Kay can see the goosebumps rising on her bare legs. “Are we going or what?”

Alex is built like a brick shithouse. Solid. Thick-necked. Wearing a letterman’s jacket with _Pelican Towne Mariners_ embroidered on the front. Kay figures, just by the way he looks, that they’re probably the same age, that he’s probably just graduated from college. She wonders if he knows still wearing his high school jacket is real loser shit. Maybe he does know. Maybe he just doesn’t care. He can probably get away with it. He’s hot. Not Kay’s type, but she’s be hard pressed to say someone with that jawline and those dimples didn’t do it for her a little. And, just like she’d suspected, he’s the boy in some of Haley’s older Instagram pics. Her ex. She watches them regard each other like two cats about to go at from opposite sides of the farmhouse’s gravel driveway. A cloud moves over the sun, leaves rustling along the road. Jesus motherfucking Christ. 

Kay can’t really imagine Alex in the little car he’s trying to get her to buy, can’t imagine him even fitting in it. It’s a squat 2007 white Pontiac with so many dings on the body it has an almost dalmatian quality to it. And he’s not really trying all that hard to sell her on it. Has a sort of who-gives-a-fuck affect that Kay is pretty sure he’s putting on for Haley’s benefit, his eyes tracking just a little off to the side where she’s is standing. He’s talking louder than he needs to; Haley’s got her coat slipping off one shoulder, the lacy top of her camisole in full view. It’s a lot, it’s more than a lot, and so when Alex pats the roof of the car with his palm and asks, voice still too loud, if she wants to buy it, Kay says yes even though she has no idea if the car runs or if his $1,500 asking price is even in the ballpark of a good one. “Yeah,” she says again, feeling suddenly a little shell-shocked, “yeah, I want it.”

She has to call her dad twice before he answers. Which feels honestly humiliating, especially when Haley opens up her phone to give her some privacy, like she knows exactly what the fuck is going on. And when he does answer, pretty much on the last ring, Kay can tell that he’s busy with something else. He’s probably got his phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder. She can hear him rustling papers. At least that means he’s probably at work. Which doesn’t bother her the same way it does when she knows he’s at home. But if he’s at work, his already short temper is going to be frayed. Kay keeps it short. “Hey, so, I’m trying to buy a car and I was hoping that-“

“I was surprised not to hear from you about this earlier.”

Kay chews at her lip, not sure if she’s being chastised for not calling earlier or for calling too early. She tries to breeze past it. “I’m actually looking at one right now. I think I like it and-“

“Kay.” She straightens to attention, can hear him setting whatever papers he’s been shuffling, and remembers now exactly why she hates having his full attention. “You’re not buying some piece of junk are you?”

She glances over at the car. At the big dent in the back door, the gash on the bumper. It feels like she’s calling him from a different world. All these trees, all this color. It feels like, if she didn’t have to ask him to front some of the money, she shouldn’t even be calling him at all. “No, dad.”

He modulates his voice, pitching a little up. That high, nasally condescension that her mother could never shut the fuck up about after the divorce. “And how do you know that, Kay?”

Kay worries her lip with her teeth, fingers tightening around the phone. Clouds have moved in over the sun, the air even chillier now. “I guess I don’t.”

“My dad sucks too,” Haley says when Kay gets off the phone.

Kay blinks at her a couple times before her brain catches up with her mouth. She slips her phone into her back pocket. “How does your dad suck?” It’s kind of a relief, actually. For Haley to say it like that. Like she’s talking about the weather.

“All the usual ways.” She crosses her arms over her chest, a little more bundled now, coat fully on both shoulders. “So, are you gonna buy it or what?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Kay glances back over at the car. Alex is keeping his distance now, looking a little less puffed up than he had when they got here. “If I can get him to come down a couple hundred dollars, I can just pay for it with my savings.” Just saying that feels almost mutinous, a little overwhelming. Adult. Very.

“He’ll do it. He’s been like going on and fucking on on Facebook about how badly he wants to get rid of it.”

Kay slips her hands in the pocket of her coat. A recent acquisition that she found digging around in her grandpa’s closet. A woman’s coat, obviously, even if it’s a little big on her. A quilted, suede terra cotta colored fabric that’s way warmer than it looks, that makes her feel pleasantly incognito. “So what’s the deal with you two?”

Haley scoffs. “Like you haven’t figured it out.”

“I don’t know, seems a little tense for exes.”

Haley rolls her eyes. “Yeah, whatever. Fuck him.” She starts in a little at the side of her thumbnail before yanking her hand almost violently away from her mouth. “Well then buy it and let’s go do something.”

“Like what?”

“Like something, I don’t know. Anything that isn’t this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	13. Chapter 13

They don’t do anything that day. Haley coiled tight as a spring, Kay jittery from the money she’s just spent, from the fact that she did it on her own. And they don’t do anything for a few days after that. Haley gets busy with work and some kind of camera issue that she sends Kay a long, highly technical explanation about. _Like anyway im going dark for a while or whatever,_ she’d texted, _ugh._

And Kay gets busy too. With trying to figure out what the rattle in the engine of her new car might be, with trying to calm her dad down over the phone. He’s irate in a way she’s not sure he’s ever been and Kay finds herself, for the first time in her life, _not_ enjoying the extra attention he’s suddenly giving her. Getting dressed down over the phone, it turns out, doesn’t hit quite the same as all those trips to In’N’Out right after the divorce where he’d sat twiddling his thumbs over animal style fries.

Speaking of the divorce, she gets busy too with ignoring her mom’s phone calls. They either come late at night or very early in the morning. Voicemails so long. Kay knows she’s just rolled onto her phone, that the only thing she’ll hear is the muffled sounds of her shifting, breathing. Her phone is like a ticking bomb. She reaches for it constantly. Hoping her roommate will text her back, hoping that scrolling through Instagram will stop filling her with an increasingly pissed off sense of dread. So sometimes she’ll just put it in the bedside table upstairs, wander around the house, running her fingers over everything she passes. That time feels busy too. With staring at the blank canvas she bought. With watching hours and hours of public broadcasting. With having increasingly vivid daydreams of Dr. Harvey. And that last one? That last one is taking up _a lot_ of her time. Harvey with his hand pressed to her back to listen to her lungs easily becomes Harvey’s long, nimble fingers sliding up to the nap of her neck. Becomes Harvey setting his glasses on the table beside the bed where she’d slept that night, curling his body over her, one hand undoing the buttons of his shirt. In the fantasy he’s a good kisser, skilled in a vague way that reminds her that she's never been kissed very well at all. In the fantasy, he has a porny cock, big and veiny. In the fantasy, he eats her out without her having to ask. In the fantasy, he tells her how good she tastes. Embarrassing shit, _humiliating_ shit. But the kind of shit that takes up so much space in her brain that before she knows it, it’s been almost two weeks since the afternoon out at Alex’s grandparent’s farm and Kay feels the dazed, pinched way you feel when you’ve just come up for air, hand between your legs, something awful and embarrassing playing on your laptop. 

So she makes a big show of leaving the house. Scrubs herself down in the shower, does her makeup for the first time in, god, like a week. She slips on the same gossamer dress she wore to the party before changing her mind at the first gust of cold wind on the porch. But now, ensconced in the flickering warmth of the coffee shop, Kay thinks she might have gotten away with it, even with the trees bending in the force of the wind out the window. She hadn’t even intended to come to the coffee shop, had her stomach set instead on a slice of pie and a cup of Gus’s strong coffee. But the coffee shop looked so beautiful as she pulled up to Main Street, an orange-y hearth-like glow cast out onto the sidewalk. She’d been drawn like a moth.

And the coffee’s better here, Kay has to admit. Which isn’t totally a surprise. Not with the cannisters of coffee beans lining the wall behind the counter, the whirring sound of the grinder that floats beneath the soft chatter, the music just loud enough to feel the beat but not hear the lyrics. Kay takes another sip of coffee, spreads her fingers out to flatten the spine of the paperback she brough with her. _Pet Sematary._ She’d found it in the drawer of the master bedroom’s bedside table. Finally mustering enough courage to root around the house a few days ago, finding nothing interesting aside from a few odds and ends. She’s left the cigarette butt in the ashtray like a little offering, careful not to jostle it as she slid the tray just a little across the table. That’s when she found the book, poking out from the half-opened drawer. Kay remembers reading it in high school. Or parts of it. Or another Stephen King book a lot like it. Male protagonist in Maine. Professor or writer or father or whatever. She’s having trouble focusing on it. Her eyes drifting across the coffeeshop. It’s fuller than she remembers it being the last time she was here. A few people reading in the plush armchairs back by the fireplace, some bent over tables in heated discussion their steaming coffee between them. There’s a parrot in the corner that Kay somehow hadn’t noticed before, a brilliant rainbow of color on its featherd. It bobs back and forth on the little dowel where it’s perched, flitting every so often to the register to squawk at a customer. It’s the kind of quirky that places back home try so hard to manufacture. Here it’s almost overdone, almost _too_ cluttered but Kay digs it, feels comforted just taking it all in.

She’s so absorbed in watching that she doesn’t notice Emily coming out from behind the counter until she sets a plate down loudly in front of her. Kay jumps, closing the paperback. “Spooky book?” but Emily doesn’t give her a chance to answer before she slides the plate a little closer. At the center of it, something like a rice krispie treat but denser, studded with chocolate, a thick layer of swirled fudge on top. “Mars bar squares. I’m trying the recipe out. Tell me what you think.”

Kay pushes the paperback away to examine the plate. “Sure. Yeah.” She glances up at Emily. “Thank you.”

“You’re my sister’s friend, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Cool.” Emily brushes her neon hair back behind her ears. “She needs good friends.” She turns to head back to the counter, the scoop neck of her sweater revealing the tops of colorful tattoos across her back. Kay tries not to think too much about Emily might have meant. It feels too personal, almost inappropriate. Even if she and Haley have been texting almost every day. Mostly memes, mostly bullshit. But sometimes, late at night or very early in the morning, they’ll talk about art. Their art. Like it’s a secret. Her phone buzzes, clattering against the table’s wood. It’s Haley, of course.

_come chill me with tonight_

_im off work in 15_

Kay waits for her on a bench near the gazebo, legs crossed under her, looking out down the Main Street. It _is_ a lot busier now than when she got here in August. Cars parked on both sides of the street, big groups of people meandering down the sidewalk. Kay glances over at the clinic then up at the maples around the park, their kaleidoscope leaves shivering in the breeze. Hardly any green now, just pops of red and orange and yellow, bright against the overcast sky. White fabric ghosts hang like little ornaments from the trees and around the railing and roof of the gazebo someone has strung garlands made from fabric leaves covered in a thick layer of glitter glue. There’s a stack of pumpkins at the base of the gazebo. None of them carved yet, their smooth, ridged skins like something out of a painting. Kay leans a little back and takes a long breath, her fingers hunting for the inhaler at the base of her bag. Habit again, like it hasn’t been since she was a kid. The air smells like hay and wet leaves and, just faintly, like sugar, the scent wafting probably down from the bakery next to the coffee shop. “Hey, wake the fuck up.” Haley peers down at Kay, knocking her lightly in the shin with her foot.

Kay straightens up, rolling her neck. “That was, like, way longer than 15 minutes.”

“I fucking hate tourists.” She says a little too loud, eyeing a middle-aged woman coming from the direction of the Dress Bam.

“Bad day?”

“Worst day.” Haley sniffles, looking around the town square before stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jacket. Her knees knock a little, like the tights she’s wearing aren’t thick enough to keep out the cold. “Come on. Let’s go get fucked up.”

Kay checks her phone. “It’s like literally not even six ‘o’clock.”

“So what? When did you get boring?” 

They pick up liquor on the way back from the gas station just outside of town. Kay driving. Haley slumped in the passenger’s seat, feet on the dash, gazing out the window as she gives vague directions, her hand waving almost dismissively. Baby pink today. Coffin-shaped. A fresh manicure. 

Kay’s been to her house before, or outside at least. That night when Harvey stitched up her hand and drove them both home. But she’d been so fucked up and the ride barely registered. Besides, she has a better sense of the town now, knows that the neighborhood they’re driving in is one of the nicer ones. Tree line streets with stately Cape Cods rolling by behind them, wrought iron fences. Nearly all of them with decorations out front. Friendly scarecrows and light up ghosts. But not the one Haley tells her to pull up to. Not a decoration in sight. It’s at the end of a cul-de-sac, a little smaller than the others but pretty. An eighties split-level with a few well-manicured shrubs out front. A big oak tree with an old tire swing hanging low from one branch. “My mom’s a travel agent.” Haley says, unbuckling her seatbelt, like she’s answering some question she anticipates Kay asking.

“I didn’t even know travel agents were still like a thing.”

“Yeah, well.” Haley slips out of the car, “She’s never here.” She shuts the door and starts to head up the driveway, rooting around in her purse for keys. Kays kills the engine, the warm flood of her headlights vanishing. A wind rustles the trees and the whole neighborhood seems to shiver. The sun is already low in the sky.

Haley lives in a house that reminds Kay of her childhood. Not her actual childhood, really, but the idea of it. The nostalgia of it carefully crafted by tv and movies and commercials. The house is like that, has a kind of quiet suburban niceness. Kay figures Haley probably hates it. But she can see herself here, as a kid, curled up in front of a narrow tv, pillow cases of candy at their backs. It’s probably all the Halloween decorations out at the town square that are making her feel like this, probably the way Pelican Town looks a town from every nineties Halloween movie she can remember.

They head through the entry way, down a hallway that splits off to a living room. Kay slows beside a hall table. Thick, dark wood with an old heirloom-looking clock atop it. Beside that, a framed photo. Kay turns to get a better look at it, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. It’s a family photo, as far as she can tell, Haley and Emily and their mom. One of those posed ones. Everyone from the shoulders up, the background a vague swirl of inoffensive color. Her mom’s pretty. Rail thin, big brunette hair styled up in the way Kay’s mom still styles her own, just a whiff of the eighties. The picture must be old because Emily looks the age they are now, just the tips of her hair dyed neon green, the rest the same dark brunette as her mother’s. She’s wearing a turtleneck, but Kay can still see the faint tops of tattoos above the high collar. Haley can’t be older than twelve. She’s still blonde, but it’s a more of a honey color. Her smile looks pinched, almost nervous. “Yo! Where are you?”

Kay adjusts her bag again. “Coming.”

They’re halfway through Hellraiser and halfway through the bottle of kettle one they bought when Haley’s phone rings. Both their eyes slide toward it, the muted darkness broken by the bright clattering of it on the coffee table. Haley leans over to grab it, the tv shrieking, a single streetlight pooling yellow though the paned family room window beside the screen. The whole house is dark and Kay feels cocooned in it, wrapped in a blanket, head resting on one arm of the couch, her bare feet brushing against Haley’s. One screen, a pool of blood undulates. Kay cringes. She’s not sure she’s ever actually seen this movie, remembers faintly a teenager with a pinhead mask at a party for kids, remembers faintly clinging to her mother, heart jumping like a jackrabbit. The corpse on screen undulates, skinless and raw. It’s pretty fucked up, this movie. Haley stares at her ringing phone, sighs heavily, answers it. Kay leans over to feel blindly for the remote, the movie skidding a halt right on Ashley Laurence’s horrified face once she finds it. “Yeah, Kay’s here.” Kay perks up, craning her neck a little to look at Haley. “Yeah, sure, whatever, I’ll ask.” Haley presses the phone to her chest, looks over. Her mouth’s a little slack, shiny with gloss, and Kay feels drunker just looking at her, like if she stands up her head will swim. “You wanna hang out with loser?”

“Abigail?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you said you guys weren’t really friends.” Haley just shrugs. A car passes on the street outside, someone walks by with their dog, barking once. “I mean, yeah, sure. Why not?”

Kay isn’t sure whose idea the graveyard was. Probably Abigail’s. She seems to know it really well. Seems more comfortable here than anywhere Kay’s seen her before. Spirited, almost jovial. She’s in the Misfits shirt again, a pair of fishnets with big holes around her knees. And right now she’s sitting in the glow of an upturned flashlight, back resting against a tall gravestone so old the names and dates have been scrubbed off by time, just faint dips in the stone now. There’s something nice about the way the yellow light spills over her legs, casting yellow over her black tights, skin so white it looks almost blue when it mixes with the darkness. Which feels denser out here than it did in the neighborhood. Like it’s been hemmed in by the low hanging trees, like she’d have to lay the paint so thick on the canvas it would create its own architecture. It seems to simmer on the ground, compounds the eerie quiet in the graveyard. Maybe it’s the booze or the dregs of the movie or the way the gravestones have started to loom up toward the dark tops of the trees, but Kay feels spooked, steers clear of the graves, and settles instead on a patch of sparse grass that seems the least likely to have a body under it, cracks open one of the Natty Lights Abigail brought with her even though she’s already drunker than she wants to be.

Haley seems less worried about it, a little to Kay’s surprise, settling down beside Abigail, plucking little tufts of grass from the earth with her nails. Kay wonders if they know people buried out here, if it feels almost like visiting an old relative’s house. She hadn’t known anyone in the graveyard where they buried her grandpa. Not even, really, her grandpa.

“So,” Abigail says, rocking on her hips, reaching for the flashlight. Kay glances quickly behind her. There’s a streetlamp at the front of the graveyard, but the light seems almost to flicker, like it’s being quietly snuffed out. In the other direction, out behind where Abigail is sitting, Kay can only see the faintest outlines of trees. She has no sense of how big this place is, no sense of where it begins or ends, if it goes all the way to the ocean, gnarled oaks stretching over rocky shoreline. Kay takes another long sip of beer. “I have a ghost story.”

Haley bristles, her hair standing nearly on end. “Oh my god, are you kidding me?”

Abigail laughs, “come on we have to.”

Kay feels like a spell has been broken. The darkness seems less dense, the gravestones like set dressing. She takes another sip of beer. “Have to what?”

“No.”

Abigail’s eyes glitter. She seems like an entirely different person out here, like she’s come alive. “Yes, come on, we have to tell her the Pelican Town ghost story.”

Haley looks like she wants to crawl out of her skin. “Are you kidding? No one wants to hang out with a bunch of Maine losers. Let’s talk about something less lame.”

“Wait I want to hear the story.”

Haley glowers at her. “No, you really don’t.”

Kay cocks her head, grinning. “I do. I love scary stories.”

Haley scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Of course you do.”

“Yes.” She says, clapping her hands together. “Story time.” Abigail takes a long pull of beer, holding the flashlight just under her chin, its light skittering across the bones of her cheeks, up toward the worn lettering on the gravestone above. “There’s a grave not far from where we are now.” Kay leans back on her hands, the grass stiff and brittle against her skin. “Of a one Colonal Buck. Some judge or soldier or whatever” She waves her beer dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that in the 1700’s he burned a woman alive in the town square for being a witch.”

Kay’s beer is poised just at her lips. “Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious.” Haley crosses her arms, silently seething. “Legend says he burned her right where the gazebo is now.”

“That’s so fucked up. Are you kidding me?”

“I know, right? Fucking men.” Abigail cracks open another beer. Haley reaches for one too, still pulled taut as an angry cat “It took her days to burn.” Kay grimaces, setting her half empty beer down in the grass. “They say she screamed and howled and cursed the whole town until she was nothing but ash. Or well, almost nothing.” Abigail raises both eyebrows, the flashlight beam wavering over her face. “They say that all that was left of her in that big pile of ash and timber was her left leg, cut off right below the knee.”

Kay finally takes a sip of her beer. “Fucking grim.”

“But that’s not even the weirdest part.” Abigail waggles her fingers. She has blunt nails, painted messily black. “About a hundred years after he died, a stain appeared on his gravestone.” Goosebumps spread across Kay’s arms. “In the shape of a leg.”

“Jesus.”

“They scrubbed and scrubbed but no one could remove the stain, so they tore the gravestone down and erected another in its place.” Abigail shifts the flashlight right under her chin, lowers her voice, playing up her inflection. “But the stain returned and remains etched into the face of the grave to this day _in this very graveyard._ ”

“It’s not even scary.” Haley says, so loud her voice echoes.

Abigail laughs, shining the flashlight in her face. “Oh, come on, it’s a little scary.”

“Is it true?”

Abigail finishes off her beer, sways a little like the booze is just now settling into her bloodstream. “Yeah, actually. The stone is like on the other side of the graveyard, stain and all.”

“You’re fucking joking.”

“This is so stupid!” Haley knocks Abigail lightly on the shoulder. “I don’t wanna talk about stupid ghost shit.”

Abigail rolls her eyes. “You’re so sensitive.” And then she brushes her hand across Haley’s knee. They both freeze, then recoil. So quick it’s like it almost didn’t happen. Kay averts her eyes, clears her throat. She finishes her beer. A wind rustles the leaves of the trees, kicking up their dry scent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	14. Chapter 14*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse the worse than usual editing. I plan to go back in eventually and clean stuff up but goddamn 2020 really has been fucking something.

She’s sobered up a little by the time they reach Main Street. Which is amazing considering the sheer amount of beer and liquor she’s pounded in the last few hours. She can feel it sloshing around her stomach, that sort of soft, hay fever headache she gets with beer forming behind her eyes.

But Kay feels chilled out too. Cotton mouthed and a little drowsy, that sweet spot where she’s still drunk enough that her body is all loose but not so drunk she’s worried she’ll heave. Where everything seems beautiful and easy. Not like the town needs much help this morning. It’s the sort of full color, Norman Rockwall-style pretty that Kay always thought only existed in paintings spreading out in front of them as they walk.

She inhales deeply. Salt and wet leaves and woodsmoke. The air crisp, just the faintest wind rustling their hair as they make their way down toward Pierre’s. The boats bobbing in the harbor at their backs bleat, the sound a faraway echo, the sloshing of the water against the old wood of the dock so soothing that Kay feels a little like she might just doze off where she stands. Haley elbows her, just lightly. “I’m not carrying you home, okay? Keep it together.” Kay sticks her tongue out and Haley rolls her eyes. They’re a little glassy, a drunken grin passing just briefly across her lips. The sun breaks over the horizon line as they pass a few parked cars near the entrance to town, filtering through the trees, and for just a moment the air all around them is golden. Not like California beach afternoon golden, but a softer gold, tinged in blue, that skitters along the cobblestones, shimmering against Haley’s jewelry. Kay fills her lungs with it. She hears Abigail sigh from beside her and glances over. She’s fallen quiet since the graveyard, keeping a pretty blatant distance from the two of them as they walk. But as she looks up at the lightening sky, her arms crossed over her chest, there’s something peaceful about her face. And it makes Kay feels peaceful. Makes the ghost story Abigail told seem far away, and the errant touch she’d wanted to say something about but didn’t like nothing at all. A morning bird calls from the top of one of the maples, hidden by the ochre leaves. It all seems far away. California and her roommate and her parents. The creaking in the attic and the cold howl of the wind sometimes at night. It all feels irrelevant. Kay’s never felt more in her body. More present. More free. She takes another long inhale. She could go anywhere, really. Imagines herself washing pie down with coffee as the sun rises higher in the sky, Gus humming behind the counter. Imagines herself sitting on the dock, watching the ocean until her fingers go numb.

“Oh shit.” Abigail’s voice cuts hard through Kay’s quiet thoughts. The three of them slow to a stop on the sidewalk. “Fucking Doc’s out. Oh shit.”

Kay goes totally rigid. She brushes her hair behind her ears, now suddenly aware that she’s been drinking on her back in a _graveyard_ for the last like five hours. Suddenly aware that she probably looks like fucking shit and that Harvey is the last person she wants to see right now. Haley scoffs. “Literally chill. As if Harvey would like tell your dad you were out or whatever. The whole world doesn’t revolve around you.” Abigail flushes, whatever peaceful feeling had been wafting off her gone now. Replaced with that familiar prickly exterior.

“Good morning, you three.” Harvey settles in front of them, one hand on the handlebars of his bike, the other on the seat. He’s dressed in a pair of long bike shorts and a pullover. The shorts end just above his knees and Kay can see a dark smattering of hair down his muscular calves. That does something for Kay in a weird sort of way she’s never really experienced before. There’s something…adult about it. His whole body is like that. Well-defined thighs, narrow hips. The watch on his wrist. Kay blinks her gaze away when she catches herself looking too long at his fingers curled over the bike. Hokey. _Honestly._ “You’re all up early.” He gives them a quick onceover. “Or very, very late.”

Haley snorts. “It’s the weekend.”

“So it is.” He says with a wry grin on his face. The grin becomes a genuine smile when he turns to look at Kay and it’s so open and friendly that Kay nearly rocks backward, her chest thumping. “Would I be wrong in assuming that you’re feeling much better then?”

She swallows, all that beer suddenly pooling in the base of her throat. It feels like they’re the only two people on the sidewalk. Just them. Kay feels like she might puke. “Oh yeah,” she says, clearing her throat to try and make her voice sound less hoarse, “totally, yeah.”

“I’m glad.” He nods, swinging onto his bike and buckling his helmet under his chin. “Do me a favor and drink some water before you head to sleep.”

“Sure, okay.” She holds his gaze for a beat longer than she means to, watches as he quirks his head a little to the side, the sides of his mouth ticking up. He nods again, then back behind her at the others, before he pushes off onto the street, heading down the long road that slopes toward the ocean.

“Okay bye, asshole!” Kay turns to look at Haley, sort of stunned. But she’s not yelling after Harvey, she’s yelling after Abigail who’s ducked into the alleyway beside Pierre’s, balancing on the dumpster as she tries to pull herself up onto the front awning of the shop. Abigail waves dismissively over her shoulder at them before disappearing into the high window at the peak of the roof. Haley clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Such a fucking bitch, wow.” Kay is starting to feel drunk again, like maybe she’d passed out on Haley’s couch and dreamed the graveyard, dreamed Abigail brushing her hand across Haley’s knee. Dreamed too the private little smile Harvey just gave her. But when she turns to look down the road, she can see the tiny pinprick of him heading along the coast. Very real. Just the like the chill that has settled in under her coat now that the booze is starting to wear off. “Let’s go sleep this off at my house,” Haley says pulling her own coat tighter around her neck. “My sister might drop by later. Maybe she’ll make us some breakfast.”

Kay wraps her arms around herself. It’s colder than she realized and she feels a little gutted though she can’t put her finger on exactly why. But Haley is already heading down the street, hair swishing around the fur collar of her jacket.

She sleeps most of the day. Wakes up disoriented and woozy beside Haley just as the sun starts to set over the trees outside, a long line of orange light. By the time she’s crawled home in her car, dark angry clouds have started to form over the ocean and by the time she slips one of the frozen pizzas she got from Pierre’s into the oven, a heavy rain has started to fall, punctuated by loud claps of thunder and bolts of lightning so close the lights in the house flicker. The electricity in the air feels almost exciting. The rain lashing the windows, the thunder so loud it seems to boom from the core of the earth. The house feels like a ship tossing in the sea. It’s a thrill. Almost exhilarating. And maybe that’s why she ends up crouched in front of her laptop on the living room couch, a cooling half-eaten piece of pizza on the coffee table beside it.

At first she googles bike routes in the area. She doesn’t really find any aside from a short section of something called the East Coast Greenway that cuts narrowly along the coast near Pelican Town. So she changes tack, scrolls through Maine biking forums. Hoping to find his name, or a username that is sort of like this name, hoping to find…what? Kay sits back, one hand hovering over her keyboard. She feels watched. In maybe the purest sense of the word. Not in the house, not in some weirdo Maine ghost story. No. Watched by the version of Harvey that’s been running backtrack in her mind since he stitched up her hand. He would be so creeped out by this. She _should_ be so creeped out by this. “Stop it,” she says to the empty room, shutting her laptop a little harder than she meant to. Outside, the rain continues to howl, the house groaning under the force of it. She rests her hands on her thighs, shins tucked up under her on the couch, and just stares at her closed laptop. This is really fucking embarrassing is what it is. _God_ She squeezes her knees then leans forward to open her laptop again. Her fingers waggle over the keys. _Well,_ she thinks settling her fingers on the keyboard, _there are a few ways to work something out of your system._

The video’s promising at first. Not nearly as bad as she expected it to be, the sheer humiliation of typing ‘doctor’ into the search-bar on Pornhub nearly enough to get her to close her laptop. But she’d found something that seemed a little less embarrassing than everything else, keyed it up with a quick glance toward the door. Like someone might come in. Like she’s not the only person out here for literal miles. Kay shifts her hips, leans over the press play.

The video’s pretty new so the girl has a bush, tits that are even a little smaller than Kay’s. And the doctor doesn’t have a mustache but he does have dark hair so even though it’s ridiculous – the girl fully naked in stirrups, the doctor’s sort of weird, nylon-y looking pants comically tented between his legs – Kay can soften her vision and imagine it’s her. She watches still perched on the couch as the big-dicked doctor rolls his chair up to the edge of the examination table and spreads the girl’s legs. Kay does the same, rolling her cloth shorts down to her knees as the camera pans to a closeup of the girl’s vagina. She doesn’t usually like this shit, almost reaches over to switch it off, when the guy starts to touch her. Softly. With the backs of his fingers, spreading her wetness across her lips, letting it catch the light. It’s really gentle actually. No fingering. Nothing like that. Just stroking her pussy, almost petting it. Building and building and building so that when he finally runs his thumb across her clit the woman moans in a guttural, decidedly not porny way. And Kay moans too. Because her fingers have apparently found minds of their own, slipping between her legs. Kay rocks against them, two fingers shallowly inside herself, the heel of her hand rubbing against her clit. The angle isn’t great, but when she closes her eyes she can so easily imagine herself with Harvey, riding him. She rocks her hips harder, imagines his hands smoothing their way up her thighs, resting on her hips to help guide her up and down his cock. His glasses are still on, but a little askew. His hair is wet from the rain. A blown out tire, her brain supplies, that left him on the side of the road, that brought him to the house. Kay can’t quite figure out how him showing up at her door would lead to anything even remotely like this but it doesn’t really matter, does it? Not with the way she’s fucking herself on her fingers, the way her brain conjures him so easily beneath her. _You’re beautiful,_ he tells her, a little breathless, _my god aren’t you just so beautiful._ She grinds down onto him, hips moving frantically. He chuckles, gasping a little as she shifts her hips forward to take him deeper. _Here,_ he says, pulling her hands gently from her hips to lay them on his chest, _let me._ He runs his thumb along her clit, juts his hips upward to fuck her deeper. He has a smattering of dark hair across his chest, a long line of it “God.” Her voice seems so loud in the room. “Oh my god.” _Easy,_ he tells her, lifting himself up so he can wrap an arm around her waist, pull her closer to him, _easy._ The change in angle drives him deeper, the warmth of his skin to her skin sends has her bearing down harder. She starts to moan, loudly, the tension growing between her hips threatening to snap. _That’s it,_ he says, brushing his lips across her neck, _there you go._ “Oh my god.” Her voice pitches up. “Oh my god, I’m gonna cum. Harvey, oh my god. _Harvey_.”

She isn’t even finished cumming before the humiliation sets in. Before she opens her eyes and finds herself alone with her fingers stuffed inside of herself, the air chilly from the storm outside. On her laptop the girl is spread out onto the exam table, the doctor holding her hair as he fucks her doggy.

Kay leans forward and exits out the window. She stands, pulling her shorts back up over her hips, and tries not to think about how she just beat off on her dead grandfather’s couch thinking about the only person in town who can help her with her asthma, the man she cannot seem to stop fucking running into. Beat out and _called his fucking name_ as she came. She runs her hands down her face. Jesus motherfucking Christ this is so out of control. Every single part of it. Like her not having a job. Or how she isn’t even like painting with all this free time she has. How she’s just holed up in this fucking old ass house fantasizing about someone who is maybe probably old enough to be her dad and probably definitely does not give a single shit about her. Kay crouches down and to her incredible horror, she starts to cry. Big fat loud sobs. Like a fucking kid. She can’t remember the last time she cried like this. The last time she felt like this. She’s homesick in a sort of backwards way. Homesick for a thing that doesn’t even exist anymore, maybe never did, that she can’t even map the contours of. And she’s not sure if it’s the humiliation or the out and out terror that is making her feel like she might literally die but before she can even think clearly she’s turned her purse upside down in search of her phone. It doesn’t even occur to her how patently unfuckingcool it is to be calling Haley until she’s on the last ring and by then it’s too late. “Yo,” Haley says, sounding like she’s still half asleep.

Kay sniffles. “Hey.”

She hears Haley shift. “Whoa, oh my god, are you, like, okay?”

“Yes, I don’t know. No. No. Not really.”

The silence on the line lasts long enough for Kay to get ahold of herself. To realize that she is the stupidest piece of shit on the planet for calling her right now. “Okay, I’m coming over.”

Kay blinks. “What?”

“I’m coming over. Give me like, idk, a few minutes or whatever.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Literally dude, I was not asking your permission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know about you guys but I was really needing some coziness in my life :)

It started with a six pack of beer, halfway drunk. Haley with her back on the same couch Kay just fucked herself on, the storm that had been raging only an hour before replaced by a night so still it seemed like it could go on forever. Kay sat on the floor between the couch and the coffee table, trying to figure out how the fuck to talk about how she’s feeling without admitting she wants to get dicked so hard down by the town’s only doctor. Without exposing herself more than she aleady has. She’d settled, weirdly, on talking about her dad. Because it’s easier than talking about her mom, and less embarrassing than talking about Harvey, and less fucking abysmal than talking about the bottomless pit yawning wide inside of her. “He’s neglectful. _And_ controlling.” She’d said, taking a swig of warm beer. “How the fuck do you manage to be both?”

“You know,” Haley said, somehow managing to drink the beer on her back without spilling, eyes fixed up at the wooden beams along the ceiling, “the easiest way to tell your dad to fuck off is by not needing his money anymore.”

And it ended here. Kay with both palms on the coffee shop’s tile counter, watching the line outside start to curve around the block, the clock not even ticking past 5:30am, a steady dread rising inside of her.

“Don’t stress.” Emily comes around from the back, hair askew, tying her apron around her waist. She musses her hair before taking an espresso like a shot, glancing over at the front door with a shrug. “Crowd this big is gonna be all tourists and tourists are easy peasy. Gus is the one who’s gonna get the complain-y ones.”

“Oh.” Kay looks over at the front door, then back at Emily. “Really?”

Emily fishes around in one of the tall glass jars by the register. She pulls out a biscotti flecked with chocolate, slivers on almond on the glossy top. “Nah.” She breaks it in two, hands one half to Kay. “But just pretend like that’s true.”

Kay has no experience. In coffee or food service or anything. Just four summers folding and re-folding t-shirts at a Forever 21. Remembers vaguely that her roommate used to come home in the afternoons before class smelling like coffee, the grounds a dark line under her nails. They never talked about her job, Kay never paid much attention to the baristas at the coffeeshops she went to back home.

Emily doesn’t really seem to give a shit if Kay’s got experience or not. “Coffee’s not hard,” she’d said when Kay showed up at the store the evening before, the big moon rising heavy in the cloudless sky, waning light skittering over the tops of the trees “it’s the people you have to worry about. The coffee you can learn.” She’d told her about grinding and brewing and steaming milks over a couple plates of food from Gus’s, the fireplace crackling at their backs in the empty shop. “And latte art,” Emily said, eating her fries four at a time, “no one actually cares about that shit. Just like wing it. Just in general. Winging it’s the name of the game.”

And that’s exactly what Kay is doing. Or trying to, at least. Making the coffee as Emily takes the orders. Procedural, almost robotic. She gets into a routine. Finds the grinder and the steamer to be less incomprehensible than she had the night before. Finds the warmth of the boiling water kinda comforting. Her only attempts at latte art look more like the heavy clouds that have started gathering in the sky outside the coffeeshop, but no one complains. And most of the orders are just cups of black coffee anyway, a couple of red eyes that Emily has to leave the till to show her how to make. Most of the people in this morning are guys in their forties. Dressed in puffer jackets and jeans so new and unscuffed they look almost starched. They have heavy watches, more than one phone. She imagines they’re tourists, here with their families. Businessmen taking maybe their only trip of the year with their kids. They look tired, worn out. Like maybe they’ve come to the coffeeshop to get just a moment to themselves, away from whatever tight quarters they’ve packed themselves in with their families. Kay wipes her hands on the little apron Emily lent her. She’s honestly probably projecting. Grafting the hundred ruined vacations in her memory onto these strangers. She can walk right back into those memories. Her sitting on the couch in some hotel suit’s narrow living room, the only light coming from the tv. Her hands pressed to her ears to keep out the sounds of arguing in the bedroom behind her, watching cartoons through the soundless muffle of her own palms. “You good?” Kay startles. Emily’s standing just a few inches from her, wiping her hands in her apron. “Lost you there.” Kay blinks around the room. There’s no line at the register anymore. A few people lingering at the tables, the fireplace crackling at the far end of the room. “You go somewhere cool?”

Kay looks up at her. “What?”

“In your head. You go somewhere cool?” Her nose ring bobs when she smiles.

“Not exactly.” Kay says with a small laugh. “Nowhere interesting.”

“Too bad.” She turns, rolls her shoulders out with a sort of limber grace that makes Kay think she _definitely_ does yoga. “I’m gonna make us sandwiches. Anything you don’t like?”

“Nah. I’m good with anything.” Kay brushes her hands down her jeans. A wind has picked outside, a chilly howl, but the inside of the coffeeshop flickers like a candle, pulsing warmth. She exhales, settles back against the counter and pulls out her phone. A couple likes on her most recent Instagram post, one message from Haley. _lol dont fuck up today_

“Cool, cool. Back in a flash.”

The parrot doesn’t have a name and Emily had seemed surprised when Kay asked just before they’d locked up the night before after her training. Like it hadn’t even occurred to her before that moment to give it one. “I don’t know,” she’d said with a shrug, “maybe it has its own name. Who am I to tell it how to be?”

Kay couldn’t really argue with that. Could feel Emily’s esoteric-lite vibes just radiating off her and knew better than to dive into t _hat_ rabbit hole. And she figures it kinda doesn’t matter what the bird’s called. It’s not like they’re about to be friends. The thing may not have a name, but it certainly has an attitude, nipping the tips of Kay’s fingers as she tries to feed it a piece of apple. “Little asshole,” she mutters, setting the piece o back down on her plate. Emily made them both paninis. Thick slices of mozzarella between slivers of tomato and basil. The bread so hearty and seeded Kay thinks it has to be homemade. Emily’s gone now. Off to pick up a delivery from a bakery across town. She’d told Kay to hold down the fort while she was gone. Kay glances around the shop. Not much to hold down really. It’s pretty empty. Just an old woman paging through a paperback in front of the fireplace. A guy around Kay’s age at the table by the big front window pounding away at his laptop, the trees on the other side of the glass whipping in the wind.

Kay tries again with the apple, but the parrot with no name just squawks, bobbing on the little perch Emily made for it. Just a couple wooden dowels from the hardware store but Emily clearly went to town on it. Painting a swirling psychedelic pattern on the perch, yarn bombing the bottom with so much color it sort of undulates when you look at it. It’s really hard to imagine her as Haley’s sister even though she’s seen the pictures. Kay’s not sure she’s ever met two people more diametrically opposed in her life. She jumps when the door dings, pushing her plate away from her and tightening her apron around her waist. “Just a minute, sorry!”

“Take your time.” Kay freezes, turns around to find Harvey standing at the end of the counter. He’s dressed today in a brown sweater, his tie tucked under the neck, a navy windbreaker slung over one arm. His hair is a little disheveled from the wind, a curl sticking a little out beside one ear. “Good morning, Kay.”

Kay wavers, her fingers in loose fists at her stomach. It’s wild, really, the way she’s frozen like this. She’s dated guys before, fucked guys before. Had wild, obsessive crushes before. Maybe it’s just the town. How small it is, how densely connected. She clears her throat. “Good morning.”

Harvey glances back at the door. “Bit of a blustery one today, huh?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Kay brushes her hand down her apron again, smoothing the fabric. It’s late morning now, just after ten am, but darker than it had been when they opened. The windowpanes rattling against the force of the wind. Her brain is blank, completely empty and she can feel the heat of a blush start up her neck. “Well, what can I get you?”

“Just a black coffee for me today, I think.”

“Sure. Yeah.” She smooths her apron out again, not sure what to do with her hands. “Coming right up.” He smiles and Kay find herself again disarmed. Dimples. She hadn’t noticed them before. Wide dimples on either side of his face, hemming in his mustache.

“I didn’t realize you worked here.” He says as she sets the coffee down on the counter. The wind has subsided some and the boy on his laptop is gone. The woman by the fire looks like she’s dozing.

“This is my first day actually. “

Ah.” He smiles, taking his coffee and raising it in a quick toast. “Well then. Happy first day of work.”

Kay laughs nervously, still not sure where to put her hands. She settles for crossing them over her chest. “Thanks.”

He nods, smiling again. Then his eyes seem to drift across her face. “You look nice today.”

Kay startles. “Oh.”

Harvey clears his throat, scratches at this neck. He looks younger like this, just a little embarrassed. “Healthy, I mean.” He shakes his head. “I just mean that you don’t look like you’re sick anymore. You seem to be on the mend.” He clears his throat. “feeling better.” She watches his adam’s apple bob. “Is all.”

“Oh.” Kay brushes some nonexistent dust off the counter, not sure where she wants to look. “Yeah, I am feeling better. Much better.” She swallows. “Thanks to you, of course.”

He chuckles and she not sure but she thinks she might just the faintest red on his cheeks. “Good.” He has both hands around the cup, he looks down at the coffee, then up again at her. “And you also look nice today.” Kay swallows hard. He smiles. “Take care.” Her palms are heavy against the counter. She’s got be beet red with the way her heart is pounding, warmth spreading fast across her chest. 

Kay heads back to the register, brushes her hair back behind her ears. She’s breathing like she’s been running, her fingers faintly trembling. He’d surprised her is all. Showing up so out of the blue just a day after that vivid fantasy. She takes a steadying breath behind the register. Ridiculous honestly, to be this wound up. New green in the tip jar catches her eye. He’d left her a ten. Holy shit. A ten-dollar bill. She glances up to see him turn just as he reaches the door to wave. Kay waves back, fingers a little limp, trying to figure out is yelling a _thank you_ across the shop might just kill her. Emily slips in beside Harvey, a stack of boxes tucked under her arm. He nods at her before heading down the sidewalk back toward the clinic.

“Weird,” Emily says as she sets the boxes down on the counter. Kay can see the way the warm butter has pressed up against the paper of the box, the air suddenly thick with the smell of hot sugar.

“What’s weird?”

Emily’s distracted, already fussing with the creamer containers at the end of the counter. She points at the boxes. “Apple hand pies, almond croissants, cranberry bark. Do me a solid and arrange them all pretty in the case.”

“Sure, yeah.” Kay comes around the counter, starts to unstack the boxes.

Emily crouches down in front of the fireplaces, stoking some of the embers at the base, careful not to wake the now sleeping woman in the armchair. “You get too many customers while I was gone?”

“No, just the one.” Kay sets one of the boxes down. “Emily?”

“Hmm?”

“What was weird?”

Emily looks back at her, then nods, like she’s caught the tail end of her last thought. “Oh,” she says, rising to her feet, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Doc in here before.”

Kay swallows. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs, “he’s always been more of a Stardrop guy, I guess.” Kay’s heart starts to pound in her ears. That feeling she’d felt when he’d laid his hand flat on her back, when she imagined him under her, holding her tightly, starts to bubble up. A quick rush of warmth and excitement and hot terror. “Well, we better get back to it. Lunch rush usually starts about now. I saw a bunch of out of towners down by the pier so balance your chakras and find your zen because. They. Look. Like. Dicks.”

“Oh shit, really?” But Kay’s not really listening. She’s looking out the window where she last saw Harvey. Her grin takes her almost by surprise. There’s a lightness inside of her, blooming with possibility. Like the first day at a new school, like the first kiss with someone new. A new outfit, a new friend. New, new, new. Different. Possible. All of it. The door dings as it opens, letting in the cold air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys I just wanted to say that this has been an overwhelmingly fucked up season of my life (and my god I know I’m not alone in that) but writing, and especially writing on here, has been such a bright spot. Your comments and kudos and all of you that have quietly read my work have made a huge difference for me. Maybe I’m being a bit silly but it feels like we have a cozy little community here. I am so grateful for you guys. 
> 
> Tw: brief mention of a homophobic slur

“The puritans were like total monsters.” Haley says as they get out of her car. It’s a chilly day but the late afternoon sun is bright in the sky, not a cloud in sight. Kay starts to head around the car toward the town square then pauses. Haley hasn’t moved an inch, her hand still resting on the top of the driver’s side door. “Like total fucking sociopaths right. Why do we even celebrate that nonsense?”

Kay leans on the roof of Haley’s squat car, looking past her toward the town square. It’s done up today. Rows of carved pumpkins so high the top of the gazebo just peaks over. Paper ghosts and bats hanging from the low boughs of maples now livid with color. The whole town like a firework. Oranges and reds and yellows of all shades. Two smiling scarecrows wait at the entrance to the square and beyond them Kay can see the just the tops of food stands, the scent of hot sugar and cooking apples thick in the air. Kay’s never seen Main Street this busy before. Cars parks two deep on either side of the road, the sidewalks LA crowded with tourists. “You know,” she says, resting her chin on her arms, “I never learned very much about the puritans in school.”

Haley glances back. Her hair’s in two french braids today, the ends tucked into the collar of her puffy, pink coat. “Really?”

“Yeah, Gold Rush mostly.”

She nods, glancing back at the town square, drumming her glossy nails on the roof of her car. “Yeah, well all you really need to know is that they were a bunch of douchebags. Murdered some Native Americans, burned some women alive, died screaming to God in the elements.”

“Grim.” One side of Haley’s mouth quirks up. “So why are we here then?”

Haley glances back at her, looking genuinely surprised. “Oh, I mean come on. It’s Maine in the fall. A puritan village is like…standard. I don’t know.” She shrugs, finally detaching herself from the car. “It’s like, a thing you should probably experience.” Haley shrugs again. “Since, like, who knows how long you’ll be here.”

“Probably a while,” Kay says, coming around the car to stand closer to her. She’s not really sure where that comes from, but she sounds steady when she says it, almost assured. It’s easy to be on a day like today. A soft breeze rustling the leaves, the sun warm on their faces.

Haley puts her hand in the pockets of her jeans. They’re tight, hem up high and cinched on her waist. “Cool,” she says, flipping her sunglasses down over her eyes. 

Kay stays for a long time at the candle dripping station. So long that after a few minutes Haley groans and heads off, calling something about finding food over her shoulder as she disappears through the crowd of people.

The stand is under the shadow of the gazebo, manned by a woman she’s seen come into the coffee shop a couple of times but whose name she can’t remember. She’s dressed like a pilgrim, a white apron over her stiff, dark dress, a few strands of hair escaping from the bonnet on the crown of her head. It is a little weird, Kay has to admit, all this weirdo playacting but the candle dipping is _mesmerizing._ She watches the woman dip long wicks into wax, the steam from the water bath rushing up into the chilly air. A soft, honeyed smell wafts around the stand. Kay’s not sure she’s ever smelled anything quite like it before. Soft wheat, faintly cloying. She’s mesmerized. So much so that she doesn’t notice Abigail coming toward her until she elbows her in the arm. “Hey.” Kay startles but recovers quickly, accepting the Styrofoam cup Abigail shoves in her hand. She’s dressed in a pair of jeans, their rips too big to look anything other than intentional A dark suede shirt unbuttoned down the front her only coat, so long and big around the shoulders it looks like it once belonged to a man at least twice her size. “Hot cider,” she says nodding toward the cup, “Haley told me to bring you some.”

“Oh, thanks.” Kays takes a sip, then winces. “Oh wow. This is,” she coughs, “incredibly fucking alcoholic.” She glances back at the crowd around the square. Lots of kids, a smattering of old people. “They’re really selling this here?” Abigail shrugs, then brushes back one side of her shirt/coat to reveal the metallic top of a flask in her jean pocket. Kay snorts. “Cool.” She takes another sip. She’s never had apple cider like this. A little tart, like she can taste the whole apple. “Thanks.” Abigail shrugs again, stuffs her hands into the pockets of the shirt. She’s stony. Like she’s been every other time the two of them have talked. Kay curls her fingers around the cup, bounces a little on the balls of her feet. “So,” she clears her throat, “how’ve you been?”

“Fine.” She glances around the plaza, the breeze ruffling her hair. The purple’s a little faded on the ends, a little stiff where Kay can tell she bleached the hell out of it. “Nothing to report.”

“Gotcha.” Kay takes a sip of the cider, glancing back at the candle maker. She’s on another set, the candles she’d watched her dip now hanging from the stand’s little awning, swinging softly in the breeze. “That’s good then, I guess.” She clears her throat again. “Where is Haley anyway?”

Abigail’s whole body seems to go rigid, a movement so sudden that Kay turns to look at her full on. Abigail seems to shrug herself out of it, rolling her eyes. “Trying to get Alex’s attention.”

Kay rising to the tips of her toes, scanning the spot Abigail’s just dismissively waved toward. She doesn’t see Haley. Or Alex. Just a sea of unfamiliar faces. There’s a weird feeling in her chest that’s growing. FOMO maybe. In a weird sort of sick way. Like pulling back a curtain. “I was kind of under the impression that they were on bad terms.”

“They are and they aren’t.” Abigail’s got the inside of her lip caught so tightly between her teeth that it’s twisting her mouth. She seems to shiver, all down her body, like the force of what she’s about to say is rushing up inside of her. “You know he called her a dyke once? Right after they broke up.”

Kay pauses, the Styrofoam cup just raised to her lips. “A dyke? He called _Haley_ a dyke?”

“Yeah, isn’t that fucking stupid?” She shakes her head, quick like a bird, and suddenly all Kay can think about is the shadow of the fire falling over Abigail’s fingers as they brushed over Haley’s knee. She looks again for Haley, searching for the pink of her jacket in the crowd. The conversation’s become claustrophobic, the sudden urgent sense that Kay really shouldn’t be hearing all this so intense she fights the urge to bolt. Abigail seems to feel that way too, stiff again, hands in her pockets again. She snorts. The electricity in the air settles. “I’ll never fucking understand it.”

Kay’s been looking for him. Sort of. Haley’s still MIA and neither Kay nor Abigail seemed to have much more to say to each other, the residual weirdness of the tense end of their conversation just hanging in the air. So she’s been wandering. Meandering around the rows of pumpkins, the tall stalks of corn. Trying to catch a glimpse of Harvey. To…what exactly? She isn’t sure. Running possible scenarios through her head, trying to think of _something_ to say to him. And she finally has an idea of what she might say, some loose fantasy of flirting over one of the bales of hay. But he’s not there, of course, over by the hay under the gazebo. No, instead he’s nursing a cup of coffee near the festival’s entrance and Kay runs into him right as she’s searching for the bathroom, the liquor in that cider ripping right through her.

He spots her just as she does, calls out, waving her over with a smile and Kay doesn’t even think before she’s making her way toward him. He’s in a pair of jeans today that skim up his long legs, a cream-colored button mock sweater that looks so warm and soft she’s embarrassing herself with the idea of reaching out and touching it. “Heading home?” he asks when she’s in earshot.

“Looking for a bathroom actually,” she says before she thinks better of it.

Harvey chuckles, his smile ruffling his mustache. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a few couple teenagers just toppled the only porta potty.”

Kay scrunches up her nose. “You’re kidding.”

Their eyes both drift off toward the far end of the square, where a small crowd has gathered. She can hear almost wicked laughter, breathless scolding. “No, unfortunately, I am not. They’re not bad kids,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee, “just a little bored out here is all.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Kay glances back past the gazebo, fishing for her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. “Maybe Emily’s still at the shop.”

“Saw her truck head down the road about a half hour ago.” He looks almost sheepish when she turns back to him.

“Shit.”

Harvey wraps both his hands around his coffee. He seems to hesitate, just briefly. “You know, I’m heading back to do some paperwork at the clinic. You’re welcome to use the bathroom there if you’d like.”

Kay blinks at him. The air feels suddenly blown open, too bright. He’s got the sun at his back. It deepens the color of his hair, a dark chestnut that flashes burgundy at the ends touched most brightly by the sun. “That would be awesome,” she says, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her jeans, nails worrying the skin beside her thumbs, “thanks.”

The clinic smells faintly like bleach when Harvey unlocks it. “We had a little bit of a biological incident in the clinic bathroom this morning,” he says by way of explanation, holding the door open so Kay can slip inside out of the cold. She almost brushes against him as she does, smells a hint of coffee, musky cologne. He radiates warmth. Which sort of bowls her over even though it shouldn’t. 

And so it takes her a minute, Harvey already leaning over the clinic’s front desk to check for voicemail messages, to process what he’s said. “Wait what?”

“You can use my bathroom upstairs.”

“Biological incident?”

He looks up from the phone, chuckles. “Maru dropped a blood sample this morning. Nothing extreme, but protocol, you know.”

“So I shouldn’t expect to see some undead thing come shambling down the hall then?”

Harvey snorts. “No, not until Halloween.” Kay laughs, her hands still in the pockets of her jeans. It’s kind of embarrassing, this banter they’ve got going, but it feels really easy. Light. There’s something really nice about the quiet of the clinic, something cocooned. Kay feels safe in a way she’s not sure she even understands. Harvey looks up from the phone again. He has faint creases at the corners of his eyes, the only evidence that he’s even approaching middle age. He must smile a lot, she thinks in a sort of distant way. And like he can hear her think it, Harvey smiles. He stands then nods toward the hall. “It’s the door at the end of the hall. Up the stairs. Take your time.” Then he slips behind the front desk and sits down. Kay hears the beep of the voicemail machine as she heads down toward where he’d nodded. 

The stairwell is narrow and a little steep. Sunlight streams down from the top of it so brightly that she can’t see past the top step. Everything smells like raw wood.

Kay steps into the apartment and the light settles around her. It’s not very big all said. The kitchen and the living room are just one wide space, but the ceilings are high and the windows tall and it gives the whole place a sort hidden feeling. Like he’s up among the trees, secreted away like some watchful owl.

He has a small tv against one wall hemmed in by two heavy bookcases. Kay fights the urge to go see what books he has on the shelf. This already feels invasive. And maybe a little too close to her own fantasies, like she could just slip into one. _Humiliating._ But that doesn’t stop her from wandering a little closer to the kitchen. He has two bikes propped up against the half wall that separates the kitchen from the living room, some tools laid out on a mat at their feet. On the wall just opposite, a wide poster of the sky, lines drawn in silvery pencil as if to trace the route of something, coordinates written in neat hand below. In the corner, a spider plant hangs from a macramé planter, its long tendrils swaying in the air. The kitchen itself is neat, a little sparse. The hardwood changes to a tight tile, a pale aquamarine color that makes her feel like she’s walked into a kitchen from an old movie. The grout is meticulously clean. There’s a single loaf of bread on the counter, five grain, whole wheat. Kay spots an opened bottle of red wine tucked back by the far window. It’s high enough to overlook the town. If she squints, she can see the faint outlines of boats bobbing along the harbor.

To her surprise, she doesn’t see a coffee machine. But maybe that isn’t a surprise. He probably gets his coffee from Gus’s. And Emily’s place. Now, at least. He’s been showing up a couple times a week. Gets black coffee every time, a pastry sometimes. It doesn’t throw her off her game like it did that first time, but he always seems to be in a hurry. And he always leaves a good tip. Kay glances back across the apartment. On the other end of it, two doors. One closed, one open. She inhales, heads toward where she imagines the bathroom is.

The bathroom is small but very neat, like the rest of the apartment. He has a fuzzy mat at the base of the glass-doored shower, a towel hanging folded from a nearby rack. The sink is standalone, a narrow, mirrored medicine cabinet hanging above it. Kay hesitates, her fingers hovering over the side of it. This is stupid. And invasive. And weird. She opens it anyway. It’s neat like the rest. Toothbrush, deodorant, a small box of q-tips. A dark amber-colored bottle sits on the bottom shelf, _beard oil_ written in utilitarian script across the front. For his mustache, she figures, unsure why the idea that he would groom himself that way excites her. Kay picks it up. It’s half empty. She opens it, bring it hesitantly to her nose. It smells like earth and leather, a pinch of citrus. It smells like him. She sets it back a little roughly, embarrassed that she’s smelled it at all, and her fingers brush up against the cool metal of a straight razor. And that, _that,_ send a quick bolt of heat through her. She isn’t even entirely sure why. But it’s like the hair on his legs. It’s adult. Which makes her feel young even thinking it. Thinking about Harvey standing right where she is, head canted to one side, carefully running the sharp edge of the razor across his chin. She shuts the door, stares at herself. She looks nice today actually. Pretty in a way that makes her heart pound. Here in his apartment. Which is a dumb thing to think, she decides, mussing with the ends of her hair, letting them settle just below her jaw. Her phone vibrates in her pocket, she breaks contact with herself in the mirror. It’s Haley.

_where r u_

Kay glances back up at herself in the mirror then turns back to her phone.

_lol could ask you the same question_

Her phone vibrates.

_long story_

_tell u later_

_where r u seriously_

Kay considers, briefly, making something up. But she comes up with nothing.

_Clinic_

Haley’s response is immediate.

_omfg seriously_

_did you fucking hurt yourself again_

Kay snorts.

_no long story_

_tell you when I see you_

She slips out of the bathroom back into the apartment. Slides her phone back open when it buzzes.

_lol r u like fucking the doc or something_

Kay nearly drops her phone.

_No what the hell why would you say that_

A text she immediately regrets. Because it’s so obvious, such an overreaction. And Haley seems to know it too. It takes a minute for Haley to reply, the bubbles stopping and starting before the text finally comes in.

_wait whoa I was just joking. Are you like actually fucking or something?_

Kay glances toward the stairway, like she expects Harvey to come up any minute.

_Of course not omg_

The next texts come in quick. Kay exhales.

_Touchy_

_Suspicious ;)_

She finds him still behind the front desk, glasses a little down his nose, squinting at a stack of papers. There’s something about having just been in his bathroom, rooting around in his medicine cabinet, that makes her feel…more settled talking to him, even with Haley’s teasing still fresh in her mind. And so it’s easy really when she leans up against the counter and says, “paperwork, huh? On a Saturday?”

He laughs, adjusts his glasses as he looks up at her. “Got to keep on top of it or we’ll be buried.” Kay rocks a little on the balls of her feet, slipping her hands back into her jean pockets. “Must be a lot to be the only doctor out here.” She shrugs. “Of work, pressure.”

“It is,” he says, leaning back in his chair so his sweater pulls tighter against the flat plane of his stomach. “But it’s rewarding too. You get to meet all kinds of people.” And there’s heat in his eyes as he says it. So quick she almost misses it, so brief she’s sure she imagined it. Kay doesn’t know where to put it, that look. How to even read it. And Harvey seems suddenly bashful and that’s how she knows she saw it for real and her heart starts to pick up speed. He clears his throat. “Well.” 

“Well,” She swallows “I should probably get back.”

He settles back in the chair, elbows on the desk. “Probably so.”

She nods. “Thanks for letting me pee at your place.”

He laughs and the sound is so light, so easy. Like the sudden tension that had snapped between them has bled out of the room “Of course, Kay. You’re always welcome here.”

“Thanks,” she says with a laugh, a little embarrassed.

But as she turns to go, he speaks again. “Oh, Kay.” She glances back at him. “Have a nice time. At the festival, I mean. It’s a nice little tradition. Especially for someone not from around here.”

“Yeah. I’ve been enjoying it.”

“Good.” Something hangs in the air. Neither of them move. “Well, I’ll see you at Emily’s next week I’m sure.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.”

She takes a long breath when she steps out of the clinic. The streets are busier now. All the tourists have moved away from the plaza down Main Street. For lunch, she assumes, to shop. Kay slips her phone from her jeans to text Haley.

_Okay for real where are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: brief mention of domestic violence

_Come outside_

Kay rolls over in bed, squints at the window. It’s nine in the morning, sleep still tugging her back under, and the sky is a single shade of matte grey. Fingers of fog drift down from it, blanketing the winery’s long drive. Kay sniffs, sitting a little up, and rubs her eyes before reading Haley’s text again.

_Come outside_

She frowns, glancing again out the window by her bed. It doesn’t even look like fall anymore, not with the fog blotting out the trees. It looks frigid outside. She turns to her phone.

_What?_

The response is immediate.

_Im here come outside_

Kay sits upright, shifts over to the window to press her face to it. Sure enough, parked close to the house, Haley’s shitty white sedan sits idling, its headlights cutting blearily through the fog.

“I need to key your car.” Haley says it before Kay is even down the steps.

Kay stops, one foot on the bottom step, the other on the drive. Haley’s car is still running, the driver’s side door just slightly ajar, and she is standing stiffly beside it, her keys clutched in one hand. Kay swallows. “Dude.”

“I’m serious.” Her voice cracks, not a bit of humor left in it. When Kay steps off the bottom step, closer and into the fog, she can see that Haley’s eyes are rimmed in red, her lower lids puffy. Both their breath plumes out in front of them, fading out into the fog. Kay slips her hands into the pockets of the jeans she threw haphazardly on, rocks a little on the balls of her feet, and tries to figure out what she should say. Because Haley has clearly been crying. _Hard._ Her hair flat and pressed to her skin from the moisture in the air. An old, threadbare sweater hanging nearly to her knees as if she too had just thrown something on on her way out the door. Judging by how long it is, Kay wouldn’t be surprised if the sweater is Emily’s, spots a few stains on the hem that look suspiciously like coffee, or hair dye. Haley curls her fingers around her keys, lowers her hand just a little. “I’m serious. Please let me key your car.”

“You know I can’t let you key my car, dude.” Haley exhales. Her shoulders release, then slump. She looks off toward the side of the house, a single loud sniffle before she turns to look again at Kay. She rocks her head noncommittally, wipes her nose with her sleeve, sort of laughs. Kay swallows. She isn’t good at this. She’s never been good at this. It’s probably why no one from college has texted her back in weeks. Probably why she spent the whole summer alone. Kay clears her throat. “Why don’t we go for a drive?” Haley looks blankly at her. There’s something in her face. Like she’s just woken up too. “I have the day off. Let’s just drive around.” Haley sniffs, turns back to look at where the drive should meet the road but only fog has settled. She turns back and tosses her keys to Kay.

They end up, almost predictably, at the edge of the ocean. Haley’s car parked facing the waves, its headlights cutting blearily through the fog. Where they first met actually. _Birch Point Bluff Beach._ A mouthful. It’s foggy like it was then. Weirdly. Maybe importantly. But Kay doesn’t mention it. Sitting in the driver’s seat of Haley’s car, the radio off, the heat blowing. Because she isn’t sure if Haley will remember it. Or well no, she’s pretty sure Haley will remember, but she doesn’t know what the hell she should be saying or if maybe the right thing is to just let this gentle quiet keep hanging between them. Because Haley cried on the way over to the beach. Just quietly, softly. Kay took her hand and squeezed, held it tightly the whole way, and it had only been when Kay put the car in park at the edge of the gravel lot that Haley let go. And now she’s just sitting. Her knees up under her chin, hands around her shins like a little kid. And honestly Kay is feeling a sort of strange déjà vu. Of herself, sitting in her rental car, white knuckling the wheel. Yeah, that’s it. It feels like watching herself from the driver’s seat. Small and adrift. Kay reaches over to crack a window, letting a finger of fog drift quietly in. The air smells like brine. Sharp and cold and clean. Kay takes a long inhale, presses her hand to her sternum. Her lungs feel clear, safe. The sound of the ocean steady and rhythmic. “So.” A wave comes crashing high onto the rocks, sending spray out in all directions, the sound muted by the car, the fog. “Do you wanna talk about it?” 

Haley exhales on laugh. “Close the damn window Jesus.” Kay smiles, a little weakly, turns the crank to shut it. Haley settles back in the passenger’s seat, crossing her arms over her chest. She reaches over to turn up the heat.

She doesn’t start with Alex. Which is what Kay assumed this was about. Assumed that would be the only reason that Haley would show up on a Wednesday morning to key the car that had up until recently belonged to him. But no, she starts with the first time she was every made homecoming queen. Her sophomore year. Basking in the attention she was sure she has been waiting her whole life for. The crown was heavier than she expected. Gave her a headache. “And I sat up there,” she says, twisting some of her limp hair around her fingers, still wet from the fog, “on the back of that car in the parade and I could see the whole town. All of it. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a hopeless feeling in my whole life. That I was born here and I’d probably die here and I could see the fucking place from the back of a car.” Kay doesn’t know what to say to that. Opens her mouth, closes it. Wants to tell her that she gets it, sort of, that feeling. That claustrophobia. But Haley is already talking again. She stretches, tapping her nails against the fabric roof of the car. “So let me tell you what it’s really fucking like to grow up here.”

She gets to Alex at the end, like she’s saved him for last in her long list of grievances, her decades of confining, collapsing bullshit. When they’ve been sitting in her car for the better part of an bour, the fog ebbing and flowing with the side, the faintest splotch of yellow where the sun has been fighting to break through the clouds, she sighs heavily and leans back and she talks about Alex. “You know a lot of small town girls get hit by their boyfriends.” Kay glances over at her. All the air feels like it’s been sucked out of the car. “Alex probably thinks he’s some kind of saint because he didn’t do that.” She fiddles with her bracelet, manicured nails running over each charm. “But he made me feel stupid every single day I was with him.”

The feeling that washes over Kay isn’t one she’s felt before. Ever in her life. She feels twisted up inside. A quiet, weird, adult-feeling anger. “You’re not stupid.” Kay turns, pulling her legs up onto the seat so she can face her full on. “You’re not stupid, Haley.” 

“Yeah, I know that. Now. Mostly.” She exhales, her lips popping a little when she purses them. “So what can I do to fuck up his life? That’s the big question, right? How do I fuck him up? Like he fucked me up.”

“You don’t need to fuck up his life.” Kay isn’t even sure where that comes from, just knows that she means it, really means it as she says it. “He looks like he’s doing a fine job of it himself.”

Haley scrunches up her face. “What?”

“Come one, seriously? The guy looks fucking miserable.”

“You met him once.”

“Yeah, once was enough.”

Haley rolls her eyes. “Sure, whatever.” Then she sniffs, looking a little off-center. “Don’t I?”

“Don’t you what?”

“Look fucking miserable.”

“No.” And then more empathically. “ _No._ You don’t”

Haley nods quietly, then shakes her whole body like she’s a dog in the rain. “Well enough of this. Thanks for listening.”

Kay puts her hands back on the wheel. “We don’t have to stop.” 

“Yeah, we kinda do. I’m getting like fucking bored listening to myself talk.” Kay raises an eybrow. Haley knocks her lightly on the shoulder with her fist, like she’s some jock, some real bro. “Seriously, enough of this shit.” Her voice is lighter now, almost a laugh. “I wanna go get fucked up. Let’s get fucked up.”

Kay laughs. “It’s like noon.”

“Who gives a shit,” Haley says sitting back in her seat, resting her feet on the dash. “You said you have the day off. Let’s use it.”

“So, they do say this place is haunted, you know. Like around town” Kay leans her head back, the end of the couch cradling her neck, her line of sight right where the walls meet the high beams of the ceiling. They’ve been drinking their way through a bottle of wine for most of the day, laying out on the couch, watching whatever’s on. As if on cue, the wind howls, shaking the windows in their panes. It’s raining now. Started a little after lunchtime. Heavy and loud, like it been her first night here. Haley made a fire in the fireplace. It crackles just beyond where they’re sitting.

“With what?”

“I don’t know. The way all old things are haunted. Not with anything in particular.”

Kay sits up, looking down the couch at her. She’s still in that worn out sweater but her hair has some of its curl back now that she’s out of the weather, her cheeks have more color. “Spooky.”

Haley raises an eyebrow. “Wanna find them?”

“Find who?”

“The ghosts.” The wind howls through the cracks of the house, the windows rattling. In the hearth, the fire pops and wavers, then burns brighter.

They don’t find ghosts. Or well, not the ones they were looking for. But they do find the attic. Up a narrow, rickety ladder they had to pull from the ceiling in the hallway just outside the master bedroom. It’s musty and dark, lit only by the beam of the flashlight Haley scrounged up from one of the upstairs drawers. Filled with nothing much. An old gardening trellis, some ancient looking Christmas decorations. And a box. Which is where they start. Kneeling down beside it without a word to each other. Haley holds the flashlight, Kay’s fingers hover over the tattered cardboard edges of the box. She opens it, scattering dust into the air, glittering when they catch the light.

They’re halfway through the pictures – so old they’ve yellowed and curled at the edges, mostly of people Kay doesn’t know but can recognize, faintly, a family resemblance in – when Haley rocks back onto his heels, photograph in her hands. “Wow is this granny Evelyn?”

Kay leans over, squints at the picture. It’s her grandfather, leaned up against one of the grape trestles in front of the house. He looks about the same age Kay is now. Long and lean, dressed in a pair of slacks and well-fitted collared shirt. And he’s smiling. So broadly Kay almost doesn’t recognize him. And there, tucked under his arm is a beaming young woman. She has Evelyn’s hook nose, the same lips. “Looks like it.”

“She looks hot.” Haley purses her lips, holding the photo a little closer. “She was really nice to me after what happened with Alex.”

Kay frowns. “She said she didn’t know him.”

Haley glances over at her. “What?”

“Evelyn.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, said she’d never been up here. But obviously…” Kay nods toward the photo. 

Haley scrunches up her nose. “Weird to lie about that.”

“Yeah.” Kay opens her mouth to say something else, but the wind suddenly howls loud through the attic.

Dust scatters in its wake, the sound of it almost like a voice as it curves around the wooden beams. They sit in silence for a moment, the house creaking beneath them before Haley clears her throat. “Wow spooky.”

“I know.”

“Aren’t you sort of spooked to live here alone.”

Kay remembers one of her first nights here, when she’d half dreamed a ghostly woman coming up the creaking stairs, when she’d woken up to her lungs sealed shut. “Sometimes.”

“You know you could come stay at my place. Whenever you want. Mi casa es su casa and all that.”

Outside, the wind continues to how, the flashlight Haley brought up with them casts its beam up through the attic’s cobwebs, light spilling around them like a hearth they’re crouched around. Kay takes the photo from Haley’s hands, looks hard at it. “Let’s go to your house,” she says, tucking the photo into the back pocket of her jeans, “it is kinda spooky in here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another sorry the editing is nightmarish disclaimer. Maybe one day shit won't feel like getting hit by a bus.
> 
> Also i did say slow slow burn ;)   
> but worry not, things are gonna ramp up soon.

Kay counts six different shades of grey in the sky through the coffee shop’s window and wonders, arms resting on the counter, if it’s the reflection of the ocean that makes it that way. Dappled and pretty. And cold, that too. She rests her chin on her hands and watches the branches on the far trees toss in the wind. Most of them still have their leaves – burnished red and gilted yellows – but a few lone, bare branches reach out like gnarled hands over the street. Which is appropriate, she thinks, given the day. The paper skeletons and pumpkins she and Emily spent an entire afternoon making flutter a little as the wind rattles the windowpanes. Out beyond, on the street, kids hold tightly to their pillowcases and pails. A lone witch hat drifts back toward the harbor, carried by the wind.

It’s busy out today. Busier even than it had been during the fall festival a couple weeks ago. Main Street has swelled with people and cars. Yesterday, on her way to work, Kay had been stuck in something almost approaching traffic as she rounded the beach road toward town. The witch’s grave, Emily told her as they opened, the one from Abigail’s story is a big tourist draw this time of year. _Not exactly Salem,_ she’d said between bites of chicken salad, _but we do alright._ And they certainly seem to, from what Kay can see through the coffee shop’s big front windows. She’s yet to see a single person _not_ dressed up. Some just wearing masks but others in full-on, stage ready costumes. Kay watches as a woman dressed as Ursula comes down the sidewalk, pushing her wide foam tentacles a little in so she can scoot by the crowd. She eyes the coffee shop’s door before apparently deciding against it, heading back toward the street, her costume trailing behind her.

Trick or treating for the kids started an hour ago and more than a few of the parents have come in to get some coffee, to let their kids warm up by the fire. Emily got a few gallons of cider from an orchard a couple hours north and it’s been on a hot plate on the back counter for hours, orange rind and whole cloves bobbing up and down as it simmers, filling the whole shop with its scent. The shop is mostly empty now. Just a man sitting on the couch opposite the fire, a little girl dressed as a ladybug sitting on his lap, mouthing a pumpkin-shaped cookie.

“You meeting up with Haley after you get off?” Emily comes back from the backroom, wiping her hands on her apron. Her short hair is tied up into two puffs at the top of her head, her face faintly vaguely like a cartoon bear.

Kay pushes herself off the counter. “That’s the plan.”

Emily glances over at the front windows, then over at the little ladybug and her dad. She reaches into the case and pulls out a cookie shaped like a ghost then says, between bites, “get out of here.”

“What?”

Emily shrugs. “We’re crawling in here. Go have fun.” 

Kay lets herself in, slips the spare key back under the front pot before closing the door gently behind herself. The house is quiet and, with the sun setting, a pale kind of dark. Kay toes off her sneakers, leaving them at the front door. Long pools of light settle across the carpet, her own footfalls quiet as she heads down the hall. She slips into the kitchen and grabs herself a beer from the fridge before heading to Haley’s room.

The door’s half-open, light spilling into the hallway, and Kay nudges her way inside. Haley is sprawled out onto her bed in a pair of rolled down shorts and a sports bra, scrolling through her phone. She has a frilly kind of room. Pinks and lace and too many pillows. A whole shelf with just perfume. But above that, she’s hung a print of one of Cindy Sherman’s self-portraits. The one with her in a mask, makeup overdone, hair teased to frizz. Beside that, an Ansel Adams black and white, light falling over sharp cut cliff face, bleeding down into forested valley. They stick out sharply from the rest of the room, hang right in the center. Kay drops her coat down at the foot of Haley’s bed. “Happy Halloween.”

Haley waves over her shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, Halloween whatever.” But her costume is hanging neatly folded on the back of her chair. Kay grins.

They park on the harbor end of Main Street, pass a beer back and forth until the really little kids clear, until the sun starts sinking down past the trees. The whole ski is pumpkin orange, a starry darkness spreading down from above. Haley’s dressed as an angel. Tiny feather wings, a silken slip of a dress. Too short and thin for the way the wind is blowing, for the way it’s chilly even with the heat on in the car. Not that Kay’s is much better. A borrowed black velvet dress and a thin pair of tights. The cat ears she ordered off amazon are giving her a headache. “So, what’s the plan?” Kay asks, passing the beer to Haley for her to finish off.

Haley shrugs. “Take a walk. I don’t know. Nice vibes and all that.” She sets the empty bottle in her car’s cup holder then unlocks the door. “Besides, this place is big with tourists on Halloween. Fresh meat.”

Kay laughs, sliding out of the car. “Yeah, fresh meat. Exactly what I’m looking for.”

“Part of a healthy diet.” Kay freezes, one hand still on the car door. Harvey’s just a few feet from her, hands full of paper grocery bags.

“Um…I…um.” She clears her throat. “Hi.”

He smiles. “Hello, Kay. Nice to see you.” 

“Hey, Doc.” Haley comes around the car. “Nice costume.”

Harvey chuckles. “I’ll have you know that I am, in fact, wearing a costume.”

Kay gives him a once over. He’s dressed…almost like himself. He’s wearing different glasses, his hair gelled and combed with a straight side part. He’s dressed in a three piece navy suit which looks…nice on the hard, long lines of his body. “Okay, I give up. What are you supposed to be?”

He chuckles again. It’s such a warm sound, easy. “I’m Mr. Green.”

Kay cocks her head, looks back at Haley who just shrugs. “So…you? But not a doctor?”

He narrows his eyes, briefly confused, before laughing again. He has nice teeth, Kay thinks wildly, straight and white. So stupid, so fucking stupid. She goes to put her hands in the pockets, forgetting that she’s in a dress, and winds up instead running her hands down her thighs. Which, she notices with jolt of heat, he watches her do. Their eyes meet. He clears his throaty. “No, I’m supposed to be Dr. Green from Clue.”

“What like the board game?” Haley asks.

He flushes a little, runs a hand through his hair. “Yes. And the movie. I’m aware it’s a little dated.”

Kay shrugs. “No, I think it’s cool.” Then laughs. “And I mean who are we to talk. Costume-wise.”

“I like them,” he says, shifting the grocery bags in his arms. “Classic.” And then. “You look very nice.”

On instinct, Kay deflects, laughing, voice a little mocking. “Oh yeah, you like my costume?”

“Very much.” His voice is low, deeper than she’s heard it before. They look at each other, silence hanging suddenly heavy between them. Harvey purses his lips. Then he doubles down. “But you always look nice.” Kay’s jaw works over nothing. She should say something back, something witty, something cute. And she’s almost there, almost about to figure it the fuck out when he smiles and shifts the grocery bags again in his arms. “Well, I should probably get this candy back over to the clinic for the rest of the trick or treaters.” He nods at Haley, then looks at Kay smiling just slightly. “You both be careful tonight.”

Kay watches him head down the sidewalk toward town. She turns back to the car to find Haley looking at her nearly fucking cross eyed. “Are you kidding me?”

Kay sighs, running her fingers through her hair. “Leave it.”

“ _Kay_.”

“ _Please.”_

Haley scoffs. “Holy shit. Okay, but…holy fucking shit dude.” They both turn back to look down the road. Harvey’s already at the clinic. They watch him lean down to a few small chocolate bars into a child’s open pillowcase.

Neither of them wants to go to the party but head off toward the old neighborhood without much discussion because Haley heard from a sullen, grounded Abigail who heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend that it would be a chill nice cool whatever time. So they go. Because what else are they going to do? Now that darkness has overtaken the town completely. That soft, easy vibe it had all day hardening into something…genuinely kinda creepy. Especially as they pass the gazebo where the shadows seem to be somehow darker, cast long out onto the sidewalk. They pass the clinic and Kay’s eyes drift up toward the second floor. His light is one and she can see the faint flicker of a tv through the glass. She has a sudden, wild impulse to knock on the clinic door, to ask to come in. Which she might even tell Haley about if her fantast impulse was to get her shit rocked. Something horny and fucked up would at least be easy to explain. But what she wants, when she thinks about it really as they head down closer to the harbor, is to curl up beside him, to run her finger along the face of his watch. To feel warm and quiet and like she could fall asleep, deeply, not halfway, not waiting for a creak or a noise. It’s weird honestly. Embarrassing as all fuck. And maybe Haley is feeling weird too. She seems quiet, a little drunker than Kay expects her to be, like the night has taken something out of her too. And she hasn’t said anything about Harvey, about their conversation. Which feels…important. The moon is huge and orange in the sky. Sitting on the tops of the trees like they’re cushions. They can hear the party from the sidewalk, the houses coming up faster than Kay expects. The music, the chatter. Haley slows to a stop then Kay does. They look at each other, Haley shrugs. They cross the lawn toward the house, the grass dry under their shoes.

Then Haley stops again, groaning. “Fuck, I don’t want to go to this.”

“Then let’s not.”

Haley turns, scrunches up her face. “What? Just like that?”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” Haley mocks back to her. “You stop going to parties people stop inviting you to them.”

Kay laughs, incredulous, scrunching up her own face. “Bullshit.” “Don’t try to tell me how things work here, okay? Like, seriously”

“Okay whatever but just like tell them I get sick or something.” Kay snorts. “It’s not like they wouldn’t believe it.”

Haley rocks a little back and forth on the balls of her feet. Then, in a flurry of movement, she brushes past Kay toward the street, curling her fingers around Kay’s wrist to pull her along. “Okay fine, but only because you’re such a fucking grandma.”

They walk home in the quiet darkness, their coats pulled tightly around them. Some people still have their porch lights on, the same Halloween sound effect playlist Kay’s heard since she was a kid playing softly through their yards. And then the houses will briefly disappear. And all around them will be nothing but darkness, the faint outlines of the towering pines. The air smells like the ocean then, salty and clean. Like nothing else. They talk about nothing as they walk. About everything. Eventually, they talk about ghosts. Not their ghosts. Just hypothetical ones. Scorned lovers haunting treetops; burned witches digging themselves out of the dirt. As they get closer to the ocean, the asphalt starts to feel almost wet. They can see the town over the crest of the next hill and the talk of ghosts fades away. Beside her, Kay hears Haley take a long breath.

It comes almost gently. A twinge in her chest as she lays on her back in Haley’s bed, something almost like an itch between her ribs that pulls her all of the way out of sleep. Her vision blurry with sleep, she rolls onto her side, squints at the faint light coming in from between the slits in the blinds, and tries to inhale. Her throat’s like a wall but the panic she braces herself to feel never comes. Kay sits up and pushes herself off the bed, landing onto Haley’s shag carpet with her knees. It’s funny, she thinks, as she digs through her purse for her inhaler. Because she’s never felt this way before during an attack. Calm, together. She doesn’t try to gasp for air, doesn’t feel that bottomless _awful_ feeling she had become so used to. She opens her mouth. She inhales.

Haley wakes up on the third inhale. Startled, then slow, then all in a rush she’s on her knees beside Kay. “Oh fuck.”

Kay coughs around the inhaler, takes it out to shake it again. “I’m okay.” Her voice is still tight, sounds a little warped, and Haley gives her an incredulous look. “I am. I swear.” Kay takes another puff. “I’m okay.”

Haley gives her a once over then rises to her feet. She sniffs, musses the lion’s man of her hair. “Sure, whatever, okay. Would like…tea? Make your lungs or whatever feel better? My sister is like big about herbal tea.”

Kay sets the inhaler in her lap then closes her eyes to inhale. She can feel her lungs opening, just a little, and opens her eyes on the exhale. She tucks her hands between her thighs to keep them from shaking, that wired post inhaler feeling already rushing through her. “That would be rad, yeah.”

“Cool, cool.” Haley looks in the mirror, frowns, then musses her hair again. “I’ll go see if maybe she’s home.”

Kay texts Harvey. Which is a thing she is supposed to do, a thing he told her to do when she has an asthma attack. But it feels illicit now. Fills tinged with the way he looked at her the night before, with the way she’d imagined herself lying beside him, listening to his breathing. And so when she sends her text she keeps her phone in the palm of her hand, heat beating, a feeling not at all like she’s just texted her doctor sitting heavy in her chest. It doesn’t help that the steroids are making her hands shake, making her brain feel _wired._

He texts back almost immediately and now all she can think about is what he might be doing. Has he just rolled over in bed, hair tousled, wiping sleep from his eyes? Or has been up for a while? Out biking down the wind-whipped roads along the sea? Christ, she’s embarrassing herself. She opens the text.

_Thank you for keeping me in the loop._

_Why don’t you come by next week to make an appointment so we have a listen to those lungs._

Kay lays the phone in her lap, closes her eyes. Her eyelids hum. She can hear, beyond the door, Emily and Haley’s hushed voices in the hall. Then soft footsteps. Then the click of the gas stove. Kay inhales, opens her eyes, exhales. There’s a calm inside of her that she doesn’t really recognize. A warm, cocooned feeling.

Emily pokes her head into the room. She’s obviously just woken up, her hair all askew, a man’s t-shirt slipping off one shoulder. “You all good?”

Kay clears her throat, pounds once against her chest. “Yeah, yeah.”

“I’m gonna boil you some ginger for tea, okay? Sit tight. Holler if you need anything.” Emily pats her palm against the door frame then slips back into the hallway.

Kay opens her phone again. Harvey is typing, the dots jumping. The typing stops. Kay’s heart feels like it’s going to pound through her ribs. She locks her phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for reading <3


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